No one wants to hear those words, but sadly, this might be what the British government has to resort to if any incidents of identity theft take place as the result of the loss of a memory stick by a government consultant.  It appears that PA Consulting had to confess to the Home Office that the stick was missing and that they had no idea where it had wandered to.  This is just the latest in a growing number of security failures by the British government which is leading some citizens to lose faith in those running the country.

In this particular case, the most troubling factor is that the memory stick had information on 10,000 repeat criminals – those who have committed at least six crimes in the last year, as well as information about all 84,000 individuals who are locked up in the federal detention system in Wales and England.  The detail about these people includes names, addresses, birth dates, medical information, and in some cases, release dates that have been kept secret for safety reasons.  Now all of this information has been spread somewhere into the ether or the internet for who knows what purposes.

The Home Office has launched a large scale internal investigation and is working closely with PA Consulting to figure out how this data breach happened.  The Information Commission has also been notified, as have local police agencies.  All told, there are over seven organizations working to resolve this matter and get the black eye the government has suffered out of the light of day.  Security measures will be reviewed to make sure that this type of breach does not happen in the future.  The information on the stick was not password protected or encrypted, which is a violation of government policy.  As a result, all work with the contracting firm has been suspended until the investigation concludes and they can be cleared of any intentional wrongdoings.

Once this news reached the public, there was a substantial outcry about the whole situation.  While there is some irony that a few of the repeat criminals are identity thieves who may soon be preyed upon, there are more serious criminals, such as murderers and rapists whose information was contained on the stick.  If they become the victims of identity theft, the government and ultimately the British taxpayers will have to pay for it.  This is not sitting well with people who see the government failures as piling up and the prospect of having to compensate the leeches of society to be an absolutely appalling and demoralizing prospect.

While in this case few are pushing for those who had their information stolen, since they are multiple felony criminals, still there is some need to alert people to what options they have available in this situation.  ID theft subscription services, like Lifelock, exist to help people tie up all the loose ends surrounding this type of incident.  Rather than being overwhelmed with everything, enrolling in Lifelock takes care of all the guess work.  Two of the most frequent ways that people become victims is through fraudulent credit card or loan applications.  Since Lifelock monitors all three credit bureaus, these applications are processed only once they have been filtered through the company.  If they verify with the person whose name appears on the documentation and finds that it is not them filing the paperwork, the company stops the applications before any damage can take place.

Tags: Britain, lifelock, PA Consulting

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 8:29 am and is filed under Government Breaches, Individuals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.