At it once again
Leading on from my recent posts about data security, both nationally with the UK Government and internationally with Facebook I’m now getting somewhat jaded about the whole subject; it seems that almost everyday there’s some new story about data being treated irresponsibly some Government department that’s supposed to be looking after it.
Today we’re treated to two cases; the first is a little less HMG’s fault as it involves the theft of a Royal Navy laptop with details of around 600,000 people. Chances are, though, that as it was left in a parked car the thief wasn’t after the data, he just wanted the laptop to sell for drug money.
The second case is more serious, as it involves confidential documents from the Department for Work and Pensions being found on a roundabout near Exeter airport. Three things about this story are worrying; firstly that these documents should end in this place, secondly that similar documents were found in the same place only a couple of months ago and thirdly that no-one seems to know who should have been in control of the documents at the time they went missing.
I’ve asked this question before, but I’ll ask it once again; how can a Government that systematically and regularly fails to protect the data of its citizens, either through its own ineptitude or that of the outside companies it chooses to employ, really expect to be taken seriously when it says it can be entrusted with the type of data that its new ID card scheme will require?
Oh how we laughed!
Just had to give everyone a heads-up to this one; Reuters is reporting a case where an FBI wiretap was disconnected because they didn’t pay their phone bill! Apparently, the Feebies accounting system is “inadequate” and they’re working to improve it. Perhaps what they should also look at is their employees stealing $25,000 at a time - money which had been earmarked for telecoms services.
It’s good to know that Bush’s controversial wiretapping legislation is being undermined by the very people that are supposed to be implementing it. Of course, if you pay your taxes to Uncle Sam you might not be so happy that your ‘government’ can’t keep it’s own house in order - let alone those of Middle East countries.
All I’d say to that is “Join the club. That’s how its been in the UK for as long as I can remember.”
Brief notes
I know, I know: I haven’t been posting very regularly just lately. What can I say? I’m sorry. I don’t know if it’s the New Year or cosmic rays, or the value of the pound but nothing has really sparked me enough to make any comments (well, that’s not quite true, but I think everyone else has said everything I would say quite eloquently enough so I’ll stay away from the subject).
Which leaves us with the latest installment in the ever popular Brief Notes series; you know you love it!!
Politics
Everywhere I turn on the Net and TV these days, I can’t seem to get away from the US presidential candidate elections. So, you guys have an election to select a new leader for your party? That’s novel - you’d think Tony might have picked up on that one, being such a good friend of Dubya.
What I don’t get is all this caucus, primaries, Super Tuesday sort of stuff. It’s like you’re voting to be able to vote or something. But then the whole voting system in the US seems screwy to me; all that electoral college stuff - what’s that about? (Well, other than making sure that the man with the least number of votes get the job, of course).
Blogging 1
One of my pet subjects; there should be a further episode of my Going Self-hosted Guide in a few days but I just wanted to mention spam today. If you have a blog, you get spam; there’s no avoiding it. Wordpress.com blogs get Akismet (whether they want it or not) to filter theirs and it’s OK-ish (although just recently it seems to be somewhat over zealous and is creating a lot of false positives). On a .org blog you have a choice and thanks to a tip from Cornell Finch, I’d say drop Akismet and go for Defensio. I”ve only installed it today, but all the comments I’ve read about it rate it very highly and you do get more control than with Akismet.
Blogging 2
I read a lot of news feeds and since changing to the Mac, I’ve tried out lots of different feed readers. One of the ones that I tried and liked was NetNewsWire, but as it was something you had to pay for (albeit not very much) I ended up plumping for the free of charge Shrook instead.
Shrook is a very good piece of software for reading blogs and I’ve been using it for several months, but there was always something about the way it looked that niggled me. But today comes the announcement that NetNewsWire is now free, so I’ve switched. It just has a nicer feel to it than Shrook and I’d recommend checking it out.
Blogging 3
Over the last day or so, I’ve been having a discussion with another blogger about comments; he was complaining that his relatively new blog never got any comments. He seemed to be taking this as a personal affront, and even suggested that a third blogger only got comments because she sometimes wrote about sex and was “selling herself”.
As an aside to the issue, I started to wonder what other bloggers experiences were with comments. Did it take you a long time to get your first comment, or were you getting lots of comments from day one? Do you see more comments when you write about certain subjects, or on certain days, or is there no pattern at all?
Throughout the life of The Wolf’s Howl (first at Wordpress.com, then Blogspot and now self-hosted) I’ve seen comments go up and down like a yo-yo. I don’t get all that many, but then I don’t get a huge number of visitors.
And what’s your reaction when you do get comments? Has the newness worn off the experience and it’s just another comment, or is it still irregular enough that it’s like a little present, a reward for writing a post that someone else not only read but took the time to write about?
Football
Well, Eastbourne Borough finally got beaten in the League on New Years Day (shame!). But that’s the only loss so far - 22 games in - and they’re second in the table with two games in hand. Just need the team above to have a couple more losses and we’ll be in like Flynn!
Minority group alert!
Currently, HM Government and the various agencies associated with it are trying to introduce a nationwide, compulsory identity card scheme. They’ve promised the country that, while each person will have to pay for their compulsory card to be issued (anywhere between £95 and £300 depending on who you think is right), their data - including biometrics like iris-scans and fingerprints - will be 100% secure and unauthorised access will be impossible.
Unfortunately, HM Government has proved quite conclusively over the last few weeks that it cannot look after people’s data very well at all. We’ve had around 15 million people with Standard Life pensions have their data lost, then 25 million people who claim child benefit or tax credits (followed by another revelation that HMRC “mislaid” a further six discs of information), up to the latest news that millions of learner drivers have had their data lost - when a hard drive used by a Government contractor was “mislaid” in Iowa. Of course, that one happened back in May but they’ve only just owned up to it.
Which is why I’m declaring myself a Minority Group. As far as I can work out, the recent data losses could theoretically effect almost every household in the UK, possibly more than once. But not me; I’m not learning to drive, I don’t claim child benefit or tax credits and I don’t have a pension with Standard Life. There’s probably about half a dozen of us in the country, so I’m thinking that we should get together and have a New Year Party.
All joking aside, I’ve been against the ID card scheme from the start - mainly because they want to make you pay a huge fee for a card that you don’t have any choice about carrying, but also because I was concerned about the centralisation of so much data. What I was worried about was the data being used by unauthorised agencies to keep tabs on British residents; I realise what I should be worried about is that all of that data will end up being sold on the Internet because HMG have lost it again.
Update: in the comments, Robin has raised an issue about the ID card that I completely failed to touch on - that of security. The big hook that HMG have been hanging this ID card scheme on is that it will stop terrorism; only legitimate, legal citizens will be able to have the cards, so terrorism will stop overnight. What no-one from the Government seems to have noticed is that terrorists can be home-grown - the Madrid bombers were all card-carrying Spainish citizens. How does an ID card stop them? As Robin asks will the Government “make it compulsory to show the card whilst committing an offence?”
How much is 25m names, addresses and bank details worth?
Not much if you’re HMG, it would seem. Skimmer has a post on the subject of the Latest Great Data Loss ™ at OnceAroundTheBlog which I think encapsulates the position that a hefty percentage of all people in the UK are now in.
But we musn’t worry; everything’s OK. Gordon’s apologised, the head of HMRC has resigned and the junior clerk responsible for actually putting the CDs in the envelope has been given the push. So everything’s good again.
Oh, except for the fact that there’s two CDs out there SOMEwhere just waiting to be exploited by anyone with the desire to do so, and the fact that the ‘error’ has only arisen because of policy decisions taken higher up in HMRC, which decreed that they would send the National Audit Office ALL of the data they held, rather than just the names and NI numbers they’d actually asked for; apparently, ‘dis-aggragating’ the data “wasn’t cost-effective”.
This is the same Government that wants to introduce a national ID card scheme, who have promised us that our fingerprint and other biometric data is perfectly safe and not open to mis-use, abuse or loss. Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, someone somewhere has got a massive mailing list to sell. Even at 10p per name, they’re onto a winner.
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