What with all the hoo ha over Nanny's HMRC losing the data records of 25 million people, and all the finger pointing etc, there is one question that seems to have been forgotten in all of this.
Why were the data records of 25 million people being sent to the National Audit Office (NAO) in the first place?
Are not these records meant to be confidential?
What possible interest does the NAO have in the data records of 25 million people?
Doesn't this constitute a breach of the Data Protection Act?
Would Gordon Brown (who set up HMRC) care to answer this?
There is no way after this that we should submit ourselves to a National ID Scheme. The time has come to put a stop to this government's plans, and to rid ourselves of a now fatally wounded and dying Prime Minister.
According to various news reports the data was being sent to the NAO as part of a regular fraud check.
ReplyDeleteI found it somewhat disconcerting to hear on the news that the NAO only actually required part of the data but the whole lot was sent because there was (quote) "no way to separate it". A multi-million pound database with no 'select' function ? It fills me with confidence to think that my data is apparently being stored in a copy of Vu-File running on a ZX81.
The ultimate insult in all of this is, surely, that if you telephone any of the twat's telephone lines for reassurance (now there's a joke), you will find that YOU have to pay for the 'phone call.
ReplyDeletePerhaps they're going to put the telephone money in a little glass jar on Nanny's kitchen shelf to go toward all the zillions of pounds compensation (they say) they will pay out if necessary.
Time to get out and join me lads, while you're still allowed to leave the country.
kaptain_von makes a good observation.
ReplyDeleteOf course HMRC previously (I read earlier) sent the data as 100 zipped files on CD (or DVD?) on one or two occasions earlier in the year.
I don't think the method matters much but I do wonder why they don't have access to a common network link. (Though in some ways it is gratifying to know that they haven't!)
What they were up against of course was the contract with EDS to produce output. I would hazard a guess that any such request would result in a major project taking months and probably requiring a budget of several million.
That the same job could probably be performed to the same level of security and using a small piece of inexpensive software of a type I use regularly and that costs a few pounds is unlikely to be information that finds its way to the HMRC decision makers. I suspect that for a few quid more they could make it doubly additionally secure, though from what I read the information that the NAO was looking for would not have involved extracting any information that would be that critical.
It is difficult to believe that these people are so useless despite the clear historic evidence that they are.
My bet is the EDS will use this to frighten ministers into handing over more and more tax for pointless activities that they can fail to perform.
Grant