Has anyone ever seen Terry Jones from Monty Python and Gordon Brown in the same room?

Maybe Monty Python would run the government better

William Smith, Philadelphia, PA/USA

It is staggering that the Civil service and the Government, who have probably minimal technical knowledge, can embark on such databases without knowing exactly what they are doing. Such data should be entrusted to certain companies who specialise in Data and security, and an additional layer of security such as guards, protocols and police etc. should be ensuring its safety. They should be personally responsible, and guard it like a billion pounds of gold bullion. Would you send gold bullion without good security to an anomymous person on a motorcycle ? Otherwise, you may as well allow the data (eg. bank accounts, address, names, National insurance details) to be made public and available to everyone on the internet.

I would not be surprised if the technical knowledge of Mr Darking meant he could not type with more than 2 fingers, and although this does not prove he is incompetent, it shows how poorly qualified the government is on IT (information technology).

Joanne Marshall, Oxford, UK

so its not the governments fault when all this data can a) be accessed by some spotty 17 year old and b) is sent unencrypted?
this is a policy failure. the spotty 17 year old shouldn't even be able to have access to this data, let alone unencrypted.

kevin eaton, bracknell, berkshire

To those who say that a national DNA database is the answer, let me put you straight. DNA is not 100 %, so there is a possibility of error there. But more importantly, where will these records be kept ? Not on a computer by any chance ? In which case, for anybody to lay claim to your identity, all they have to do is subsitute their own DNA record for the one of whoever they are trying impersonate. So the problem remains the same. Add the fact that you would need to open parts of the database to third parties like banks and the NHS for verification purposes, and you end up with the same mess we have now.
So stop giving all your data away for the illusion of greater security, because there is no such thing, and never has been.
Back when you had a local bank manager, you would go to see them for a loan, and they knew you, so ID theft was not an issue. It is the faceless electronic system that has fuelled the growth of ID theft, so giving it more power is ridiculous and foolish.

alan, exeter,

Is this enough to finally turn Darling's eyebrows grey?? With so much other stuff going wrong it must be like water off a duck's back.

Rob, Birmingham, UK

The data isn't probably lost at all. The 'junior official' which means anybody who isn't the top man probably didn't post it! It's probably still on his desk with all the other paperwork he hasn't sorted yet. In fact, he probably cocked-up on the downloading, and it's just two empty CD's in an envelope with the wrong address and insufficient postage!

Rob Gill, Stoke-on-Trent, England

This was not the governments fault, it was some incompetent civil servant, OK the government ultimately takes the blame but we need to be realistic about things, in any large organisation there are incompetents from top to bottom and if one of them makes a mistake then they should be held to account. We have seen the same in journalism but we don't scrap the lot.

Dave Madley, Poole, Dorset

Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown remind me more and more of Laurel and Hardy.

Mike Ansell, Reading, Berkshire

Leaving aside the hapless Darling, just look at the rest of Broon's 'team'. Smith, Hain, Milliband and Milliband, Straw, Balls! Need I go on? Nodding dogs all. You wouldn't trust them to man a check out at Tesco's. And this bunch of buffoons and incompetents are supposed to be running the country. No wonder 200,000 a year are heading for the exit.

B. Carroll, Hong Kong, China

Why 'whom' he supports, why 'whom' he blames, please?
With apologies,
Serial Pedant, Exeter

Richard Adams, Exeter,

What I have not heard is whether the clot who did this is still in a job. Call for the Chancelor, chief exec PM tetc but after it all that idiot is still free to cock up again. What do you have to do to get sacked in the Civil Service?

David P, harrogate, England

It is wrong that the government has access to personal data about private citizens. This catastophic incompetence proves what most people already know: the government is not to be trusted. The whole relationship between the state and the individual is dangerously imbalanced and requires fundamental redress.

St G, London,

The data disk is reported to have details of our bank account details. Just what details does this mean? Do THEY have records of the details of deposits, payments, and total amounts downloaded from the bank and building society computers as a matter of daily routine?

Perhaps I am wrong but I always understood that this information was only available to any organisation, Police, Customs, Inland Revenue etc. with a court order. Could someone knowledgeable about this please let us all know?

To be fair It doesn`t seem right that he head of any large organisation should be held personally responsible for the actions of one one employee out of hundreds of thousands, many layers of management below him or her her. On the other hand it does seem time for this lying, interfering, utterly dishonest and incompetent rabble to go, and go quickly.

By this I mean the government of course, not the revenue.

Clive, Warwickshire

Clive Evrall, Filllongley, Warwickshire

We often hear press reports about government I.T. projects costing millions but we are never told why the government has to pay over the market rate for these systems. I suspect it is because of the additional security routines and other procedures required to cope with the lack of initiative and common sense of many civil servants.
I thought the story was an ill timed April fool. Surely nobody with an ounce of intelligence would entrust the personal records of millions of people to a courier?
To be fair, this culprit is not the first. NHS records have been sent to rubbish tips and I remember an R.A.F. officer losing a briefcase full of sensitive data. Most worrying is the knowledge that nothing will change and this will happen again.

Steve, Cheltenham, UK

I am extremely concerned about the wider implications of this breech in security. I am not concerned about money being stolen from my account, but the very real possibility of my details being sold on the open market and used by someone to lead a life based on my details.

Money can be easily replaced, if fraudulently obtained from ones bank account, but to have ones entire identity used by some criminal guttersnipe in order for them to obtain a passport, drivers licence or job etc, fils me with dread, especially when it would be nigh on impossible to ascertain if that were the case until it was too late.

Connie Mills, London, England

with everyone else having access to my personal data, my dna may soon be the only way of proving who I am. data may be stolen or lost, but no one else can provide my dna sample. dna would also allow anyone attempting to steal my id to be caught.

therefore, a comprehensive dna database is essential. this loss of data does not indicate that the database cannot work; precisely the opposite.

I feel that with adequate procedures, it should be possible to keep data secure. the problem here is that anyone - and I mean anyone - should know that sending data on a disk via third party courier is dangerous.

as for what brown has been planning for 10 years - he's been planning to be prime minister. no more and no less. it is quite clear that he doesn't know what to do, much as it was clear that he was incompetent as chancellor (in spite of the propaganda). prudent is the last thing he is. why we worry about id fraudsters when he is the biggest thief in the country, I know not.

jem, london, uk

A lot of people have mentioned "guidelines" but that's not the point - someone allowed a system that has incredibly sensitive data to be accessible by low level staff. Worse yet, they allowed this data to be accessed on a PC with a built in means of removing it.

Whoever designed this "system" needs to be brought up on criminal charges for gross negligence - someone, somewhere designed this system and did a bloody poor job of it, and I have no doubt they were paid a fortune to do so.

The government is responsible for putting these systems in place - if the report into the competency of the HMRC didn't find any problems after the merge that created it, then that report is utterly, utterly worthless, and whoever wrote it should hang their head in shame.

Incompetent, unsafe, shameless neglegence at every level of management that has left half the country vulnerable. This government has no idea how to manage IT, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near it.

Ross Liversidge, Ripon, N. Yorks

Labour government for you... i wonder how they will send out the national ID cards??

Adam Webb, Bucks, UK

I would constantly rant about the incompetence of the UK and how embarassed I was to be British because of it, left the country for the US, blah blah blah.

And then I spent time in China...

We're doing fine in the UK.

charles Watson, los Angeles/london, usa

This is a joke, just goes to show, the chain is only as strong/secure as its weakest link.

This is why centralizing all data is ultimately less secured and in the real world, unrealistic as far as keeping that information secure. I’ve been saying for YEARS that the ID card will be a treasure trove for anyone wanting to commit identity fraud; it will be big business when it comes around to the buying and selling of personal information.

I believe that unfortunately we will still continue on course to get ID cards, reason being, ID cards were a political game anyway and are part of Browns plan for “globalization”.

If one good thing does come out of this, then I hope it’s the fact that the public have had this brought to there attention and they can now go on and make a more information decision when they are deciding to give away there civil liberties in exchange for temporary security. FACT being, the ID cards would not have stopped 7/7 or any other terrorist related attack.

Andy , Hartlepool,

The Civil service is the body responsible for this mess. That's the Civil Service that says it needs extra staff, with extra pay, and with guaranteed pensions.

This is also the Civil Service which rants and raves at 'government interference' and how terrible it is that ministers can dream of telling it how to operate.

How about a bit more nanny-stateism in the Civil Service/Government relationship. Put the boot in on them Gordon and leave us Christians alone for a while.

Dominic Stockford, Teddington, Middlesex

Anyone who has dealt with the Oxbridge civil servants, which the UK sends to international conferences, will be surprised that this has not happened earlier

John Oxley, Vienna, Austria

Tell you what, Gordon Brown - lets do a deal - until you can demonstrate your government and civil service is not stuffed with dribbling halfwits, I will just not pay you any more tax - that sounds fair, doesn't it?

Peter, London,

The basic problem is that the government, all British governments for many years, try to do too much. What it does is way, way beyond their competence. We have an ex-solicitor making complex decisons about the running of individual companies instead of senior figures with expericne of the financial services industry. Brown set us the system he is working with and oversaw the merger of two mega organsiations with very different cultures. Even Daimler-Benz could not pull off a merger with Chrysler. What can Brown do? He has no management experience at all. He was an academic and author. all those who knew about these things wearned him not to do the merger. Governments should restrict themselves to making laws, protecting the currency and foreign afairs and leave the running of the institutions of Britain to those who know best. We have all the skill and expertise we need.

R Mason, London, UK

Where now with micro-managing every aspect of our lives by a regime that can't manage CDs with the personal data of millions on them?

Mike, Midlands, UK

Cheer up, folks! This little misdemeanour will turn out to be the torpedo that sank the ID card project. Any government that after such a fiasco still dares to push the identity card project is not only foolhardy but downright malicious. Mr. Brown is a historian; he will be well aware of what people tend to with officials who behave like that.

Ed Zuiderwijk, Cambridge, UK

While Ministers of any political stripe are expected to accept responsibility for foul-ups like this (but rarely these days fall on their swords like Offsahs 'n Gintlemin), it shows up a system inefficiency that subtends the whole administrative set-up. (The cynic in me says "all administrative systems", which is why they must be kept small , whether in government or not)That's why any suggestion from whatever corner of the House that "The Government" (ie Civil Servants and their trainees, all unaccountable) should get its nose further into our private matters must be resisted - and all these hi-tech (but probably ineffective and certainly expensive) gimmicks be rescinded.
Now there's a platform for Mr Cameron et alia (but would he dare "Cry Freedom"?).
I'm sooo glad I left Yookay (to work) several decades ago ...

JOhn Price, Cintegabelle, France

with fools, jokers and a fair number of passengers and that's where we need to sort out the mess. Efficiency is not a criteria the Government or any public office even considers and its time it did. The bleeding heart brigade need to be shut up for good. The tree huggers need to be shut up for good. The in you come Johnny Foreigner lot need to be put in their place and lets get back to a situation where we can be proud to be what we are. Oh, and by the way, I fully endorse the idea of national ID cards. whether that makes me a knave or a fool, so be it. but if we can secure the data held by our Government agencies it should pose no problems. Sort yourselves out and get a grip for any favour.

candyman, Scotland,

At £200 per bank account record (in the criminal market), these CDs are worth a staggering £5bn!!!

This needs reading again for it is almost unbelievable! The CDs are worth £5bn in the criminal market!!

And that is just for the bank account details! What about the National Insurance numbers?

And what is the government's potential liability?

The government has guaranteed to fund any losses incurred by banks as a result of this (how will the government know how the criminals obtained the information to defraud people?) so that may be an open ended commitment to cover most frauds on bank accounts for the next 5-10 years - say £50bn! at a minimum.

Surely the only sensible recommendation is to tell everyone to change bank accounts! At a cost of £15 per change of bank account, that is only a cost of £375m - a bargain!!!

And the liability associated with the National Insurance numbers? Just think of social security benefits and pensions.

Outsource everything & sue!

Alistair Nicholls, Manchester, UK

I agree with what you say but you did not go far enough. You
were too kind to the Government. You could have been much
harsher in your criticism.

Denver Watt, Osaka,

Mr. Cameron,
Time to table a motion of 'No confidence' ?

Perry S Cope, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Here's a high level view of how finacial institutions do it. Not the differences with HMRC.

Personal data and account data is only accessible on an account by account basis, except for a very small number of very senior employees. I.e. you simply cannot create a report or database which, if it were lost, would result in a large scale loss of security.

The staff who can access the complete data can only do so at their terminals. The part of the building they work in is not accessible to non-security cleared staff.

The access enabled staff change their passwords weekly. Anyone using something like a birthday or a person's name as a password is sacked immediately. Passwords must be random numbers and letters and compliance with password securtity is randomly checked without their knowledge.

All terminals at which any personal data of any kind can be accessed have CD drives and usb ports disabled.

Emailing sensitive data is blocked.

Planning prevents cock ups.

Redcliffe, London,

The Royal Mail have to take responsibility here. I left the UK in 2001 and one of the things that made it much easier to leave was that about 20% of my incoming mail was going astray. I could be waiting for an all important cheque to arrive and it might never arrive. That was in Wandsworth Council. An avalanche of protests from business and private customers in Wandsworth led to no change, at least by the time I left. Six years later it seems that the Royal Mail reliability problem has not been effectively addressed.

Paul Flynn, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong

The only advantage of living in a 'democracy' is that in spite of the best efforts of the 'New Labour' government, these things get out. They do illustrate how 'New' Labour still has the same urge to control everything and everyone that is so well illustrated in 1984 (George Orwell). thank heavens we don't have the secret police who would shoot those who expose the crass & stupid errors before the facts could get into the public sphere. And for e-mails that make it so easy to spread the news.
Labour doesn't get my vote

John Wilson, London,

Some quick arithmetic; lets assume 'two lost discs' means two DVDs. There is nothing fancy about that, all modern computers can write DVDs, they cost about 50p each and hold 4.7Gb of data (4,700 million bytes). If these two discs held 25 million records then each record could be 3,760 characters long, which seems a perfectly respectable amount of space to hold a few items like name, address, National Insurance number, and so forth.

Alan, Bath, UK

Miss Miles, I really enjoyed your article but I think you are
being too kind to the Government, you should have been much
harsher in your criticism. Articles like yours help be enjoy
watching this Government implode.

Denver Watt, Osaka,

I must say I agree with the comments by "Rotimi, Southampton" above. Sacking leaders for the incompetence of their subordinates is knee-jerk defeatist cynicism. Of course contemptible idiots are responsible. But not necessarily those at the top of the food chain. That's lazy and illogical thinking, which seems also to be a species of idiocy.

It's the same cynical fatalism, in the end a sort of petulant nihilism, that blames God for disease and natural disaster:

'Gran's got alzheimers; let's stop believing in God; that'll sort Him'.

Or closer to home:

'The VIcar didn't come see me in hospital when I was sick; he sent the hospital chaplain instead. I'll stop going to Church and in the meantime tell everyone I know she's incompetent and uncaring.'

The principle of subsidiarity states that problems ought to be dealth with at the lowest possible place on the chain of responsiblity. Otherwise. the problem will persist.

Darryl, Hertfordshire,

this sorry saga reminds of the biggest lie (no not that one!!) the one that goes: I represent your government and I've come to help you.

Mind you the biggest concern has to be that so many people seem unconcerned at these events.

Keith, East Sussex,

Nothing has changed ! .A reliable friend who maintains Government main frames........changed a disk that contained Prisoners names pedophiles.
He asked "what do I do with the old one " , and was told they have no instructions how to destroy old data disc?
No management control in that department then.

We really do need a government who are on the side of law and order and will see it through by sacking incompetent minsters and heads od departments..

D Thorn, Clevedon, Uk

Government of talents indeed...

Marco, Venice,

Mr Brown, it's pitiful that after 10 years of planning, I suspect that you have no idea where you are now, never mind where you want the country to be in the future. It's a tragic, when a surviving member of a marriage suddenly relises that other partner really did carry them for all those years. I am sorry, but you've broken down Mr Brown.

Spencer, Burtonwood, England

Never surrender yourself to any centralised bureaucracy-ever!
For this purpose I have 3 separate identities, 3 separate passports, 3 separate driving licences. There is no law that says you can't! All my identities are based in 3 separate countries and I wonder what the facial recogntion system in your airports does when I enter on a UAE passport and leave on an Irish one--I hope it confuses the bejaysus out of them.Last time in entered on a British one and left on a UAE one. I got stopped by the police for doing 43 in a 40mph zone and showed my UAE driving licence--The police said that if I had a British Licence I would have been done--they just told me to clear of, nicely!
Compete with them at their own level of incompetence and they will feel happy and content!!!

In the UK you pay peanuts and you get monkeys!!

What do you expect--a genius for £20,000pa? Don't be silly!!

ken Davison, dubai, UAE

I think it should be recorded that this is not a Royal Mail problem but a private courier "service". If you want to have a poke get the facts

Dave Brown, Teddington, London

In my adult lifetime the government has stopped running railways, airlines, shipyards etc, done an increasingly poor job of running schools and hospitals, abandoned any pretence of providing for my retirement, heavily taxed my own efforts to provide for my own retirement, failed to protect me from several burglaries, failed to protect me from the risk of terrorism in my own country, completely lost control of who is in the country, and now loses basic information entrusted to it. Any company with this record would have gone out of business long ago- it is no longer the failings of the particular government, or minister, or civil servant we should be looking at, but the whole fundamental concept and construct of the modern state. It isn't just Sudan that is a "failed state"!

Barry , Taunton,

What on earth does Alice Miles mean by the suggestion that Brown handled the floods and the foot & mouth crises well? He it was who made the floods worse and caused the foot and mouth outbreak by cutting £300 million off the Defra budget which came off repairs to Pirbright and flood defences.

Everything Brown touches turns into a disaster. Northern Rock was his fault for providing an 'unfit for purpose' regulatory regime and the latest is his gault for amalgamating the Inland Revenue and Cjustoms and sacking raqndoimly 25,000 civil servants trhus cayusing a collapse of morale. Don't blame the 'fall guy' Darling. It all goes back to Gordon Brown

christina Speight, London, UK

I had a 2nd class package delivered today ~ posted on 8th October 2007. So there's hope yet! I just feel so sorry for the erk who posted this ~ s/he's carrying the can for the boss.

poohbear, Swanley, Kent

All these government departments and public bodies like the NHS are large, rambling dinosaurs of organisations where the right hand long since forgot what the left hand looked like. A junior civil servant could be anybody with no more than a GCSE in knitting, taken on by an organisation that would scarely be able to tell him/her where the toilets were located let alone how to send information from one department to another and it wouldn't matter anyway because they would be barely paid the wages of a rubbish collector! What the hell do we expect? However, those of us among the 23 million whose data has been lost I would suggest keep a very vigilant eye on our bank balances and our children for several years to come. Rather like the avian flu pandemic that will hit us sometime between now and the next century so will this and there's precious little we can do about it!

P Ordish, London, UK

HMRC was set up- with the approval of the Tories- to run two distinct government departments on the cheap. Its culture is based on employing an unprecedented number of senior civil servants spending the earth on private consultants, outsourcing everything they can think of and introducing crackpot private sector management techniques. At the same time there is a breakneck running down of the actual workforce whilst subjecting them to ever more targets and pressure. This was a mistake waiting to happen. Not a soul in the department is surprised. What a terrible shame for all concerned.

Ben, Sheffield, UK

SDA Sigston said: 'Considering the gushingly pejorative quotation attached to this article I would have expected it to work a little harder in explaining how the Government are accountable for the error of an individual.'

If you understand the nature of responsibility, the article doesn't need to explain how the Government is accountable.

Steve, Torrington, Devon

It seems unfair to blame ministers for the errors of one out off many hunddreds of thousands of civil servants many layers of management below them, but this fiasco does raise the question of just what of our bank details does the government hold? I always understood that to access a citizen`s bank account for any organisation required a court order for Police, Customs, Revenue or whatever?

Are these details downloaded automatically from bank`s computers to a central government database?

Perhaps someone in the know would care to blow the whistle if this is the case? It really is time that this rabble of liars, cheats, incompetents and place seekers went before they finally do bring us totally into a 1984 society - by which I mean the government of course, not the Revenue.

Clive

Warwickshire

Clive Evrall, Filllongley, Warwickshire

SDA Sigston. Oh dear oh dear. Because, OF COURSE, there should be systems in place that do not permit idiotic individuals from doing something so totally idiotic and damaging. This failure is a failure of the system, a structural failure, and of catastrophic proportions. And as it is structural, exposing the absence of appropriate systems, and as it is catastrophic, the government is indeed responsible. Darling should resign at once.

Ilmarinen, JYvaskyla , Finland

If i do bad work for my clients, i loose my job. when will civil servants be brought out from hiding and loose there jobs, they must become accountable, no more blundering along safe with bullet proof pensions.

robert, london, london

Nice to see I wonder if they got the same standard letter from the post office that I received when they lost or more likely had stolen my daughters hairdressing kit at 350Pounds. We deliver 3 million etc etc Heh Heh

Dave Madley, Poole, Dorset

The solution is really quite simple, start again. Give everyone a new number, get everyone to supply new information. Put it all on a card so that it can only be used by thecard holder. Oh and while we are at it we may as well add a few more details to these handy little cards and in fact in order to "protect" you we may as well require yoy to carry them around with you. All we need now is a new name for this splendid idea.

D.L. Stephens, York, England

When learning the ABC's of IT Security, one is tought that there are three A's in Security:

1. Authentication - making sure that you know who's trying to do something

2. Access Control/Authority - making sure that the person doing some thing has the authority to do it

3. Auditing - making sure that there's a record of the action and that this audit log is inspected and any exceptions followed up.

Whatever happened here, it would seem that there could not have been any proper access control (e.g. limiting which person could do such a massive download, limiting where they could do it, limiting the maximum number of records etc) and there couldn't have been any proper auditing and follow up - otherwise someone would have known that the data had been extracted and had gone missing before the employee who experienced the 'mishap' with the post confessed!

Tim Williams, Reading, Berkshire

"...Gordon Brown. His Government is at its best in a crisis. The series of problems over the summer — bombs, floods and foot-and-mouth " The Foot and mouth outbreak was Brown's fault. Brown cut funding to DEFRA which resulted in the lack of maintenence that led to the virus escape.

Gordon Brown merged the IR with HMC and made such a mess of it that someone otherwise unemployable was left to extract the national "Insurance" numbers of the nation's children from all that personal data.

Gordon Brown will have lifelong Special Branch protection for his familly and he doesn't give a damn about the rest of the children.

Mark, Sidcup,

Maybe you Brits will kick Mr. Keynes to the curb and give Mr. Hayek a go? Start pulling yourselves up by your knickers and stop relying on the Government to take care of you.

Tacitus, williamsburg, Va, USA

EDS are to blame. And the Government are to blame for handing every single national data system contract to EDS. They have this country's entire state computer systems stitched up, thier projects are delivered late and at huge cost overruns, they design systems that frequently foul up (eg Child Tax Credit fiascos) and are a bunch of complete incompetents. When will people realise the one organisation behind all of these disasters is EDS, and that they are costing this country a fortune.

Claire James, Ruislip, Middlesex

Haven't we got our "facts" a bit twisted here? Two CD's, to most of us Compact Discs? Holding perhaps 840Mbytes of data each? For 25Million records??? Maybe I'm naively misinformed, but I don't think so!

Or do we mean transferrable computer discs, different beasts entirely, capable of holding terabytes of data? Facile journalism is very adept at spreading misinformation, just as good as politicians are at using words to obfuscate and blind the unwary.

And is the data really "lost"? Surely the information being sent was a copy of what resides on the main government computer. OK, that may make it more vulnerable to criminal interception, but is it really "lost" as the media would have us believe? I think not. Seems to me it's high time we had a bit more truth and actual facts in this situation rather than the hysterical stuff that's going on just now.

John, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

No system can be completely secure (not even a paper-based one) but they can be vastly more secure than this. Quite apart from normal security features like encryption, audit trailing, restricted access for downloading etc., the most jaw-dropping aspect for me is that anyone working with confidential data could think that downloading it in unencrypted form and sending it out via an insecure courier service could EVER be an acceptable thing to do. At best this exposes a culture of careless incompetence and at worst it demonstrates that the people running these operations are brainless morons who probably couldn't organize the proverbial booze-up in a brewery. I guess this is what you get when you promote people who are good at being politicians and sycophants rather than people who know how to manage things.

Mel, Bath,

Is the director of the transport company TNT that lost the disks the same ministers family who will benefit by 2 BILLION when ID cards are introduced ? The critism is like water off a ducks back - they just STUFF their pockets but get index linked pensions for life. THIS is terrorism at its worst as it has disrupted the lives of 25 MILLION people - more than any bomb on a train , or World Trade Centre. BUT If I park for 2 minutes on a line , or drive at 31 mph - NOW THAT they can cope with !

John Brandler, BRENTWOOD, Essex

It would have to have been a "junior official" who was tasked with sending the data to the NAO.
It is unlikely that anybody* who, in Civil Service terms, is considered "senior" would have the relevant access (passwords etc) and probably would also lack the required knowledge. [* not quite true - the department ought to have one or two "guru"-class DP personnel that have been treated as "senior" in spite of having no man-management responsibilities ... anyone prepared to bet whether they actually do have such people?].
The systems programmers and database management teams who, by nature of their jobs, will have the ability, the (system) permissions, and sometimes the (administrative) authority to access the raw (ie full) database will all be considered "junior".

Andy Holt, Rayleigh, Essex

99 comments already - this has really touched a nerve! This problem is not unique to this government but to all modern government and authority. We would be better off by far if we were to privatise the whole thing, then we can demand value for money and a reasonable level of competence from the provider.

Alan, Bath, UK

I see Royal Mail getting blamed for the loss of these discs the last time i checked they had not become an "in house courier service" with motorcycles nor do they cherry pick bulk collections and deliveries, once upon a time you sent an item and it ended up in a red van if it went missing you knew where to look now you make a call get it collected by bike delivered to another office who then send it on to a bulk drop if its easy or leave it at a RM depot if it requires multi point delivery, RM gets what is known as the last mile only and it seems thats where the finger always get pointed, Why are things done this way because its cheaper of course and if you are on the board in more than one delivery service you can make an awful lot of money...

Dave Therat, King's Lynn, Norfolk

This blunder is not surprising. The Civil Service of todays Britain takes some ideas (i.e. health and safety, environment, multiculturalism, forced equality, etc.) to absurd levels at the expense of achievement and competency.

Dom Kukuljica, Dublin, Ireland

lets face it....................the people in power at this point in time are far removed from the reality of daily life in the uk.

as for a future leader of this country.............there is not one single individual in politics right now that even looks like they could hack it.

the loss of the data, this failure to secure private information highlights the lack of quality in public services in all sectors, and this incident will be the one to consolidate the publics growing frustration with their goverment, and the state of the country.

going thorugh the comments before mine, i think one or two folk feel the same!

matthew robertson, aberdeen, scotland

"Second Class and lost in the post"?
Somewhat succinctly sums up this Government in a short sentence!
What a farce it is.

David Michael, London, UK

I wonder what are the qualifications for the guy that gave the envelop to the bike rider, and for the biker. I also wonder what their pay rate is. Sometimes you have to start at the bottom to know to whom you are giving this responsibility. A clean sweep of management and of the hiring and wage practices might help!

harold brown, ALBANY, usa/ny

This is why we shouldn’t have ID cards - some monkey in the government will lose the data. Perhaps now people will realise the danger of allowing the government to keep too much information on us, instead of branding the critics as criminals with something to hide.

Ed, Bristol, UK

If a bank does this to its customers it gets pilloried in the press and fined by the FSA, at the very least. But we can choose our own banks. We live in Walthamstow (Attlee's old seat) - we cannot choose the Government. My wife used to collect the child benefit at the post office down the road. Then this Government said it would be more efficient to pay it directly into our bank account. So they do - and tell everyone else our details. More efficient for the banks and the civil servants and the crooks.

Shaun, Walthamstow, London

SInce the government has jeopardised the security of the individual with this amazing blunder, having obtained the data in the rush to "streamlining", perhaps it should reconsider an option. To pay child benefit in cash at the post office. Individual bank details would be secure, post offices woudl have a further income stream and the community another way of ensuring its own safety. Biometrics can be copied so please no talk about increased security with ID cards and biometric passports.

Patrick , Taipei, Taiwan

So in a technologically advanced nation we still have to download this data onto discs to send it from one government body to another? I would have expected the government to have their own encrypted intranet for just this sort of thing.

Tony Ambler, Austin, Texas, USA

Competence is a word we have long heard to describe the person now in charge of this tired, shambolic and aimless Government.

The hypnotist who previously ran the show is performing elsewhere and people are awaking to behold an unprecedented disaster. An over-centralised bureaucracy has been constructed in the manner of a multi-storey car park with reinforced concrete poured day by day, layer upon layer. After a decade, we are three thousand levels up now and for what? It's totally unusable.

They say no one will lose by this, wonderful! Then who will pick up the tab for these, almost weekly, indemnities? Oh, it's us again!

Didn't we pay for this "not fit for purpose" construction nightmare? Yes. So having paid twice, are we better off? Mmm no.

With less disposable income, more debt, higher interest rates, falling house prices, and a plunging pound, we can add the institutionalised disclosure of our personal and financial details to any fraudster who gets lucky.

What competence?

Steve Buckel, Braunau-am-Inn, Austria

"Do not give any of these Government Departments any Information about you, they clearly only want it anyway for alterative motives."

Many a true word spoken in typo, Ross.

Mike, Sydney, Australia

Who_at_the_Internal_Audit_Commission_needed_all_that_information_and_WHY???

Tone Franklin, Nottingham, UK

Both the NAO and HMRC need to shoulder the blame. The NAO should not have requested the data. What possible justification can they have for needing the entire database? Equally HMRC should not have released the data. The disregard of the Data Protection Act across 2 major government departments suggests that the government thinks it is immune from the law. How can we trust them to look after our personal information? Any project to build new databases must be stopped and reviewed and all existing databases must be properly protected in terms of systems, infrastructure, process and access. Above all the discs must be found.

Kathryn, RCT,

mishandling of half the British population's data is traeting the people wih utter contempt.

Anyone needing transfer this amount of data should be accompanied by 2 armed guards - it should be treated more preciously than the crown jewels

george enock, tunbridge wells,

The problem is the Civil Service. The Chief Executive has gone but it seems the guy who screwed up is still in a job. What do you have to do to get sacked in the Civil Service? governments come and go but the incompetants in the Civil Service survive. Things will not improve until this is tackled.

David P, harrogate, England

There is a saying in the Civil Service: in the end, everyone is promoted to the level of their incompetence. It seems Brown made a good chancellor but not such a good PM.

People should find what they are good at, and stick with it, embellish their career, and make a superb department out of whatever place they work at. Instead they swap it for a higher profile job and lose their footing.

I don't think improvisation is the skill most in demand at such a high level as PM. When will there be a leader who takes human evolution and the environment most congenial to it, into account? When will there be a leader willing to help and support the human brain?

iain carstairs, bedford, beds

The root cause of the problem here is the trainloads of extra legislation that government and business is having to cope with. Data Protection is causing havoc in financial services with responsibility for data being governed by compliance departments. Until IT staff are formally made responsible for all data and finance staff made responsible for money laundering the sooner better compliance in all matters pertaining to data and protection thereof might happen. Governance whether from the civil service or of a corporate nature is nothing more than a joke and tragically more situations like this are likely to occur.

Richard Hoblyn FSI, City of London, UK

Why not employ a load of students, God knows they need the money for their top-up fees, at just above the legal national minimum wage, to frisbee the data/discs across the country. I've seen them in the parks in summer and believe me, it'd probably be a safer and more accurate mode of transport.

Failing that, maybe a couple of well-travelled MPs could use their travel expenses (aka the country's tax revenue) to courier the info across the country when they do their 'daily' commute. Oh, but that would be more expensive than a standard courier, wouldn't it?!

RM, Birmingham, UK

The Scottish socialist didn't spend the last ten years planning, he spent in control of most areas of domestic policy, implementing what he believes in, which is an oppressive nanny state that spends money for the sake of it because he believes that the bigger the public sector is the better. Quantity before quality is what he believes in, and the result is no quality administration at all.

Oliver Chettle, Bedford,

It is time for this government to stand down before they completely cripple this country with their incompetency.

Quackers, Edinburgh, UK

The big problem with government always is that they do not listen to anyone but themselves. They go headlong into most things without a thought for any independent advice outside the confines of the Cabinet Office and Whitehall. There lies the big reason why matters and the system eventually fails. Indeed, other than the 25 million missing information files, over the last decade alone government and Whitehall have wasted at least £500 Billion on botched and scrapped projects that were thought up by people within government and the civil service that did not really care, as it was not their money but that of the taxpayer. This is the greater problems that these people create and where it will continue until independent thinking is allowed into the corridors of power. No chance of that though as politicians do not like to be told what really they should be doing and where unfortunately they will continue to sell the country down the river.

Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation

david hill, bern, Switzerland

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" or in plain English "Who guards the guardians?"

Government departments are supposed to implement internal controls. The NAO is supposed to to check that controls implemented by government departments operate correctly. If the controls are inadequate they're supposed to report on this to senior management and insist on corrective actions.

Surely, as soon as the people at the NAO realised that the DWP/HMRC didn't have the expertise to filter the data as requested nor the budget to implement reasonable controls to safeguard the privacy of the data subjects, they should have immediately alerted senior management at the DWP/HMRC to the break-down in internal controls?

If they didn't do so, surely they were not acting as independent auditors? Whilst the primary control failure is clearly with the HMRC, surely the ineffectiveness and sheer incompetence of the NAO also needs to be investigated?

Tim Williams, Reading, Berkshire

It's not the name of the party who's nominally in charge of this beaurocracy, it's the beaurocracy itself that's out of control. The tyranny of paper-pushers!

Tone Franklin, Nottingham, UK

the country is run by an unelected public school elite who live in AN alice in wonderland world - with total belief in their own infallibility -and I dont mean politicians I mean the civil service - overpaid and out of control - heads should roll amongst this arrogant inbred crowd of CIVIL SERVANTS.I wonder what schools and Universities this lot came from -OXBRIDGE no doubt

terence austin, MILTON KEYNES, ENGLAND

Please God let this be the death-knell of the Big Brother state and its compulsory identity cards.
Surely no-one can now trust this or any government with our secrets?

Max , London,

Well so much for privacy, and the government gives us the freedom of information. It would seem like it is now pretty free in all unwanted directions now. I personally feel my personal information and my family's, will never be confidential whilst this government remains in power. I hope a future change of Government will have our interests at heart for once, and not lead us like ignorant British lambs to the slaughter. What a sad country this is becoming.

Gordon, Hereford, UK

How else does the public (and politicians) think that data is transported on a daily basis in the public sector?

Any centralised computer database is immediatel at risk, because:

1. No system is 100% secure, so there will always be a risk that the security system is broken

2. A centralised system immediately becomes a target of thieves becuase of its very nature.

3. All security systems rely on human compliance. The more people it relies on, the more likely it is that corruption and/or human error will cause a breach.

4. Once a breach occurs, the whole database is compromised.

5. You will VERY rarely discover a breach when it first occurs. There is usually a history of breaches waiting to be discovered.

6. How did someone have the authority to put 25 million records onto two CD's?

7. Why were they shifting this data on two CD's to another location?

8. If someone needed this data they should come to the central site and work on it record by record.
cont'd..

Edwin Thornber, Bucharest,

A junior minister should not have had access permissions to copy the database, just as call centre workers don't have access permissions to copy financial databases.

The HMRC IT security procedures are obviously a shambles. Both Brown and Darling should resign.

The ID card scheme must not be allowed to proceed. The reason government IT projects are usually a disaster is that government IT contracts are a jobs-for-the-boys racket. The ID card/national database will be no different.

mark johnson, Edinburgh,

2 Words

No way!!!!!! This debacle shows how accidents can happen with data, if the gov't think we will let them loose on id cards think again!!!!!!!!

Henrymen, Manchester,

Where where the failsafe in the system to stop "junior" employee from copying highly sensitive information from a CLASSIFIED system? He could not have done it on his own authority. More senior people would have been involved and I speak from working on government IT systems as an Security Consultant.

Notional Security, London , UK

Guess who is eventually going to pay for the cost of this incompetence. The taxpayer , customers and shareholders of banks probably and payers of Council tax who I believe will eventually end up paying for the services of an Acting Assistant Police Commisioner and 12 officers who have been instructed by the Government to investigate the "loss" of the discs despite no suggestion that a crime has been committed.
What with this and the money squandered on inadaquate non working IT systems etc no wonder this government consistently finds ways to take more tax from us.

David Harris, Pickmere, Cheshire

Sorry to you insecure blokes with supersize chips on your shoulder,
it was a bloke that downloaded and sent it ...and an ' IT expert' to boot. It's OK though, when he comes out of police protection a nice reality show will soon snap him up.
There are numbskulls of both sexes in this government.

elenor, high wycombe, bucks

All this goes much deeper like ALL the Information even Banks have on us. If these Instututions have their way it would become a cashless society. Do not give any of these Government Departments any Information about you, they clearly only want it anyway for alterative motives. People in this country are FAST becoming extremely angry against Politicians of ALL parties.

Ross, Glasgow, UK

Can 25 million names, dob,ddresses & bank details really be stored on just two CDs?

RA, Mnchester, GMP

The notion of secrecy of personal details was being undermined
well before this incident. When one applies for credit the company will access a database which will show them your credit history in full. This Inland Revenue blunder is another example that the information can, and will, fall into the wrong hands and no government in a democracy can close off such a risk 100%

Simon, Malta,

To SDA Sigston:
The Govt is accountable because of it's completely misplaced faith in the ability of computer systems to solve all the world's ills. A biometric ID card system would not have prevented this from happening, the only thing it could possibly have done was logged the person into the machine in the first place thereby guaranteeing who who using the machine. The information would still have been downloaded (role or even user based security is apparently not present at HMRC and is completely unrelated to Biometrics) and would still have been sent on. The defense of the Chancellor that this could not have happened under a biometric system demonstrates the complete lack of understanding of any kind of computer implementation at the very highest levels of Govt and may well, on reflection, account for some of the phenomenal blunders that seem to be repeated time and time again in the field of Govt IT systems implementation.

R Hughes, London,

As you say, idiots, but we don t want idiots changing the government. You might say that this is not without precedent but, flippancy aside, the failure was not brought about by ministerial incompetence and if anyone is sacked it should be the civil servants responsible. Otherwise it becomes a comparatively simple matter to destabilise the government and raises an altogether different aspect of security.

Henry Percy, London, UK

oh my God does this mean Cameron might be PM one day?.

Filmer , Loughborough, Leicestershire

Considering the gushingly pejorative quotation attached to this article I would have expected it to work a little harder in explaining how the Government are accountable for the error of an individual.

SDA Sigston, London, UK

The real shocker is the incompetence of the civil servants. You can change governments, but you cannot get rid of the thousands of tossers in civil service. HMRC had 94OOO salaried employees on the day it was created. This, to the best of my knowledge, is more than the EU has in total.

The idea that the state can do things better has just gone out of the window. The Thatcherite-NU Labour project, to concentrate all powers in the hand of the state, is dead. Federalism has to be the future of government. Take powers off the central state and bring it back to the communities is the way forward

Fred Caprivi, Manchester,

Why such the fuss? Just because you lock your front door it does not stop someone from breaking in, so is the answer provention, turn your house into a fortress? If the public was more willing to except the fact that data access is data protection the current trend of those willing to use it againest us and hide behind the current lack of data information would make it far harder for them and would be far easier for us to find them. We live in a big brother state that is a fact from your computer, mobile, car, gas bill everthing about you already exists so embrass ID cards, and public data. The reality is they will make live safer, Yes this shouldn't happen but it does and the real answer is to make it an irrelevent event rather then a relvant one.

Howard, East Sussex,

The other issue is that, as with all my mail this year - and I am sure - countless of others, is that the CDs got lost in the post. When will the Government start to discuss the Royal Mail..which for me (I live in Streatham, SW London) doesn't work, full stop.

Jon, London, UK

This is, yet another example of why a DNA database is a horrendous and unthinkably bad idea. I have always said that this government were incompetent and nothing but trouble. The very government who (for one of many examples)preached about the importance of education, and then brought in Student tuition fees. Then preach to us about protecting our ID, and then do this. The DNA database is a violent rape of our privacy, and is just that - a database - another thing that can be put on a disc and 'lost'. Let us not forget that while we may have only just heard about this latest government incompetency, it happened over a month ago, and they didn't even report it as missing until last week. The stupid among us believe that a DNA database will make us safe and it WONT, all it will do, is be another thing that can be accessed and abused, just like this database.

You wouldn't reveal everything about yourself to a new partner, NEVER surrender all about yourself to the government. SAY NO.

Peter Greenall, Prestatyn, Denbighshire, UK

Can you imagine the uproar if the same thing had happened under the previous Conservative Government? Messrs Brown and Blair would have been at its throat so any defence of Brown and Darling will not do. Nu Labour has been in power for some 10 years so a systematic defect like this is their fault. Can you imagine what Brown would have siad had it been a private company which had done this!

William, London,

When will politicians be made personally (financially) liable for their foul ups?

Michael, Lincoln, UK

Can this Government but trusted with anything ?

Mike , London ,

Hopefully this whole episode will lead to a wider realisation that individuals need to get on the front foot and take action to protect themselves from the consequences of breaches such as this and other personal data losses. This is a uniquely 21st century problem that the neither the govt. nor law enforcement agencies can entiely prevent. Everyone has a personal digital identity that is "out there". We need to make ourselves harder targets. We can't rely on anyone else (govt or police) doing this for us.

Andrew Thomas, Bromley, United Kingdom

1. Who designed and approved a system allowing a junior official unilaterally to download and release priceless information like this? Not the junuior official, that 's for sure.

2. What business is any of this of the National Audit Office? Why did they even dare ask for this data - let alone get it?

Anyone who now supports ID card is a knave or a fool.

Mod, London,

It's ridiculous to suggest that Darling should resign because of this and whilst I am a firm believer that "incompetence starts at the top", Darling cannot be accountable for everybody down to the junior officers. Get a sense of perspective.

These are the same people that propose putting our DNA on a database and introducing ID cards. Oh, please.

Amber, Stevenage,

To me, what is even more concerning than the fact the HMRC lost the huge amount of data, is the number of people dont seem to care.

I'm sorry, but I care! I dont open my mail infront of my postman, and I dont post my bank details on the internet, and it's really scary the number of people who dont seem to care (possibly people without kids, who are not on the list?) that 25 million (thats a LOT) of people's data could be out there somewhere.

Like it or not, this government set up the department, it sets the budgets, it sets the rules. If they dont enforce those rules, or make the department work, then they are culpable.

Arthur, Newcastle,

Why was this data not encrypted?
Why were procedures not put in place for just such an event like this?
Although not personally involved, Gordon Brown must shoulder some of the blame, as he was chancellor for 10 years, and would have been instrumental in implementing the procedures.The government has lost all credibility.
Cameron must be rubbing his hands with glee.What a pantomime!

Alan, Stafford,

I'm a foreign student living in the UK, and it has never ceased to amaze me how the British society cries for the blood of its leaders whenever any incident occurs, no matter how remote it is from the Minister involved. The summer floods were somehow the fault of Gordon Brown, the loss of information in the post the fault of Alistair Darling. Isn't it contradictory how everyone decries the slightest hint of nanny-statism, but wants the Chancellor to be involved in every office in every department that reports to him, even though the department concerned has a chairman?

Rotimi, Southampton,

So much for trusting the Government (of any political party) with our personal details which will be used for Identity Cards, supposedly to ensure our security.

Neil, Gloucestershire, England

'Because as soon as you put it on a computer, a bloke in an office can download it and stick it in an envelope...'

Who said it was a bloke?

Ezzer, Grimsby, Englandshire

It doesn't matter which government or which minister - however it is their place to take responsibility . The misplacing of sensitive data on such a scale is appalling.

Helen Coombs, Sherborne, Dorset

1. Encrypt everything.

2. Use a dedicated, secure intranet link to transmit data.

3. Don't employ anyone who appears to be a COMPLETE idiot. Transfer them to the Home Office.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

The problem with this government is that it combines the control zeal of the worst totalitarian states with total incompetence. And this incompetence starts at the top.

Chris, London,

Whilst I whole-heartedly agree that lessons should be learnt from this mistake - mainly by those immediately in charge of security and procedure at HMRC - the sheer amount of vitriol being spouted by the press has gone way over the top. Yes, the buck eventually stops with the PM and the Chancellor, but only after it has popped in on literally hundreds of other individuals on the way. Do you really think that the government is any less angry about this than you are?
Any government will make mistakes, just as any other large organization will and, indeed, any individual. Too many people are spoiled by living in this country and have no idea of what true government incompetence really means.

Kathy, London, UK

Why are they not naming the complete numpty that sent the CD via TNT ? She really ought to be named ... don't you think Alice ?
;-)

Benzo, Nr Chelmsford,

k philips... it's no good saying people rant about this kind of stuff because we want to get rid of the government. you've got it the wrong way round. we want to get rid of the government because of stuff like this. it's just a small piece in a jigsaw of comprehensive interference and incompetence. we don't need fraudsters to steal our money, we've got a government for that.

jem, london, uk

Departmental agencies like HRMC are semi-autonomous 'branches' of governmental departments. A junior clerk in an agency like HRMC reports up to the chief executive of that agency, and in this instance the chief executive has resigned. The head of the government 'parent' department of such an agency (in this case Alastair Darling as head of the Treasury) is responsible for macro-management, coming up with the general ideologies and policies that the HRMC might steer itself by, he is not responsible for the intricate processes and day-to-day practices of the HRMC. The person who is isn't in his job any more.

Chris, Leeds,

Even though the problem is with some minion somewhere, it is important that someone in authority takes the rap. The simple reason being that without the ever present danger of having to take responsibility for what happens in your department there's no incentive to make sure things work properly.

However it has pretty much settled the argument against ID cards. We can be sure that at some point someone in a government department somewhere is going to leave the ID-card database for the whole country on a disk in a pub, or on a laptop on the back seat of a car where it will get stolen. Though NuLabour being what it is, isn't capable of seeing that.

John Small, Faversham, UK

this is not the fault of a junior member of staff. it is the fault of a system that allows a junior member of staff to act incompetently (at best) without restraint.

jem, london, uk

If this rabble are so incompetent at the basics, it makes me shudder to think what exposures we are under from serious international organised fraud and terrorism. Plucking vital information from government departments would be like taking candy from a toddler.

Don Smith, Oxford, UK

Government incompetence? Maybe, in the end, but it is harsh to blame Darling or Brown. Do you really think the same mistake wouldn't have happened if we'd had a different Cabinet or Government?

Graham, Portsmouth, Hants

> If you can please propose a solution that is 100%
> secure and that still allows a modern society to operate

For a start try making sure that the PCs that are used by junior members of staff don't have a CD writer or USB port, so data can't be transferred off and popped in the mail.

Have a system where only the most senior members of staff are able to transfer unencrypted data.

RG, Manchester,

I know not what Miles' qualifications are but it is ridiculous to be frothing at the mouth and blaming the Chancellor for this, much less the PM.
They cannot be looking over the shoulder of every clerk in the civil service. The official responsible should be sacked and his immediate superior(s)
The writers and members of the public who go into a hysterical feeding frenzy at every mistake are completely ignorant of how government works.
The next party that gets elected will inherit the same civil service and its incompetents.
Guidelines were in place and they were ignored by some idiot who should not have ajob there anyway. It could happen just as easily under Cameron or anyone else

leonidas, bath, uk

Ian in Toronto is safe from New Labour's incompetance but those of us who live in the UK are not. Ian in Toronto has not had his personal information lost and put at risk of fraud. I would suggest that he would rant if he was in the some situation as us poor folk . Alice expresses our frustrations admirably.....

William Powell, Cirencester, United Kingdom

The deeper you look into this fiasco the more shocking it becomes.

First, what are they doing moving data around on discs in such an obsolete fashion? Why are they not using something they have had for years, the Government Secure Intranet?

Second, why are they sending personal data to the Office for National Statistics? I thought the ONS wanted statistics, not full-blown personal details.

This highlights the careless, cavalier way this organisation treats the information trusted to them.

Stewart Ware, London, UK

Anyone would think that Alistair Darling personally downloaded the stuff and popped it into his own out-tray the way people are carrying on. I notice no-one has yet named and shamed the "junior official" who has caused all the furore. Quite why Darling has to take all the flak for what some minion did is not clear to the eye of reason. But it all makes good headlines and now that the media (and Alice Miles) want to see an end to the Labour government I suppose all this hysteria is pretty inevitable.

K Philips, London, UK

Brown and Darling should go they are both culpable for Northern Rock and the identity fiascos. In fact Brown is perhaps more culpable since he was the architect of the conditions that allowed both fiascos to happen.

This government has lost all credibility, Jacqi Smith is making a total mess of the Home Offiice, which was just an unfit mess before she arrived. Milliband and Malloch Brown are managing to screw up our foreign affairs, Darling is at best a ditherer at worst incompetent. The 3 most important posts apart from PM are in utter disarray, time for the "unelected" PM to fall on his bagpipes and toddle off back to Scotland for good.

Richard K, Nottingham,

What has losing this information got to do with this or any other government? Surely it is the case that the senior civil servant manager responsible in revenue and customs for keeping public data secure has failed to put in correct safeguards in place. The civil service has a history of poor management of public data and has wasted billions of pounds in inefficient IT systems.

R.J.Owen, Liverpool, Merseyside

must agree with ISA we are continualey following the goverments latest 'idea' too busy to be able to do the day job properly .
Goverments are at there worst when the try and run things they know nothing about.

C, Leeds,

Why wasn't the data encrypted?

Alan Carlisle, Haller, Luxembourg

Why did the National Audit Office want a supposedly secure database? Were they entitled to have it? Are all government databases passed around among themselves like this? I'm so glad I did not let my GP enter my medical data onto the NHS spine.
One crumb of comfort might be that the data was probably entered with equal competence in the first place and is therefore inaccurate.

Mike Sedgwick, Eastleigh, UK

It wasn't but two or three years ago the media announced thousands of passports sent from the Passport Office went missing en route their owners. At the time I had to wonder why they were not sent out via registered post forf everyone's benefit..

Now I have to wonder why HMRC didn't learn from the Passport Office.

Dennis, Portland OR, US

Surely the Government should now pay for Equifax Protection registration for all families affected!

Clara, Somerset,

Forget the ineptitude of putting something like this in the post: the worst aspect of this fiasco is that a junior employee was ABLE to download such sensitive information to disc in the first place. The ability to download information to a disc - never mind to download information on 25 million people - should be very strictly constrained to a very small number of authorised individuals and made physically impossible for the rest. Otherwise it's the equivalent of giving every employee in a bank the combination of the safe. If a (presumably poorly paid) junior employee can do this for licit purposes, he or she, for the odd million pounds from an offshore fraudster, can also do it for illicit ones. So the fact that this downloading was done by a junior employee does not lessen the managerial incompetance involved, it grossly increases it.

Anne Murphy, London, UK

Um... isn't it the *previous* Chancellor who should be carrying the can on this one? I mean, he held that post for - what was it? - 9 years or so? Seems to me that this sort of stupefyingly entrenched incompetence can't justifiably be pinned on the new guy. Unless it's governmental policy to look for a scapegoat, or sacrificial lamb, or some other expendable animal. What an excruciatingly species-ist state of affairs.

Oliver Cunningham, London,

It should be made very clear that these discs were not lost by royal mail but a dutch company TNT. Why is a government office using a foreign courier to transport mail when they are the major shareholder of a British postal service

D Winstanley, Ipswich, England

Why does the government want all our personal details in a datatbase anyway as it's certainly not to combat terrorism? I can only assume that it has to do with keepign a check on what we spend and where to make sure that we are paying all the possible taxes they can squeeze out of us. I have always been proud of being British and holding a British passport (even when we had to accept the new red ones) but to blackmail me by saying that unless I agree to have an ID card I will not be able to obtain a new passport when my current one expires is something I find totally unacceptable.
I have no objection to having an ID card with exactly the same info on it as my passport but it seems that the government want more than that?

George, Glasgow, UK

All our Data is in the post .Its hard to believe,Forget id cards,can you imagine what would happen if all that data fell into the wrong hands .?Now we know we cannot trust the greedy banks too .Darling has not said yet ,we will not lose any money as he did with northen rock.And the whole country will pay for it again .Lets go back to systems that work not lump everything under department.Can you imagine what will happen when they lose our health detail if they ever get the system to work. we could have trained hundreds of doctors and nurses for what its cost and even cleaned the hospitals.Brown and Darling must go for a start.

s fisher, london, England

Although one can't personally blame Alistair Darling: being in the job such a short time. The Government is at fault, being the
ultimate regulators of the civil servants for the last 10 years.
And how can they still talk about ID cards, which seems a more
efficient system, for criminals to obtain our details.
And they have bought out numerous regulations and penalties
for private systems, of which those in the crown systems are exempt from. It is such a pity we can't fine the Labour party £10
million pounds for incompetence.

Alan Walton, Leicester, England

In this age of encryption technology - there should never have been a case of complete and utter disregard for these confidential records. I work within the IT Security industry and each day I am securing companies data and these are small companies as well as large and the government cant even get this right - maybe if they spent a little more money on these sorts of things rather than seasonal bonuses I may not be needing to write this!

Ricky Cibardo, Croydon, Surrey

It may be wrong but how delicious it is to watch them all flounder

Ken Wyatt, Todmorden, uk

Remember, you can prosecute HMRC under the Data Protection Act, for failing to take due care of your data, should you be affected

Jeremy Poynton, Fromeville, 51st State

This is the information age and we better get used to it. Your personal data is now in hundreds of data bases, government and non government. Even data you delete can be recovered.
We cant go back to paper files stored locally. The genie is out of the bottle and the modern world cannot function without access to data and quickly.

j Gallagher, London, UK

A first rate article. Here in Spain, identity cards have to be held by all Spaniards over the age of 14. In recent years terrorist attacks have occurried in Spain, one in Madrid killed 198 people and injured 2000 others. The cards didn´t prevent the attacks. Why waste public money on identity cards in the U.K. when there are more pressing requirements?

Charles Morgan , Madrid , Spain

Darling might get the blame but who was in charge the Revenue and Customs for the previous 10 years

Tim Cecil, Dinan, France

Quote: "Because as soon as you put it on a computer, a BLOKE in an office can download it..."

Quote: "Someone gave a disc containing confidential data about 25 million people to a BLOKE on a bike? And HE lost it?"

Quote: "And it wasn't just one GUY; it happens often."

Watch the sexism, Alice...

John Tomlinson, Brentwood, UK

You cannot compare ID databases with searches at airports.

You are comparing apples with oranges.

Searches of passenger's bags and shoes is vital to prevent terrorists from presenting a physical threat.

Matthew Clarke, Worcester,

To Ian in Toronto, I work for a major IT company and believe me it's no great shakes to secure data at every level, it just takes a dedication to implement a system that cannot be broken by low-level people. Of course, like in any situation it could be possible for the most senior of people to go crazy and copy data, but it's a question of eliminating risk at the low levels and minimising risk as you proceed up the levels of management. Alice Miles and every citizen in the UK has a right to be absolutely furious at this most elementary breach of data security, and by the way, this action breaks UK and EU law. I wonder if the police will exercise their right to prosecute the ex-leader of HMRC, as they should.

Bobby Tran, Enfield,

I wonder how long the lines at the banks will be today with people changing their account details?.

mitch, Wolverhampton, England

This is a complete disgrace. Why did a junior even have the ability to download that the database in the first place? That sort of sensitive info should be stored behind firewalls and encrypted at all times, with only the most senior people having access to it. It is a blatant and very serious breach of the Data Protection Act and surely Revenue department needs to be held to account.

This Government should have ensured that the HMRC had the correct procedure and safeguards in place. I know they say they did, but obviously they did not, or this would not have happened. That is the whole point to systems, junior people do not get access to sensitive data. The Government is totally imcompetent and we need an election now. I really think we should get together and protest and demand it.

As for the ID cards, there is no way I am giving biometric info to any government department now. And I am certainly not handing over my kids biometric data. No way.

blair, London, Surrey

Actually, it seems to me that companies take better care of information than governments. American Express knows a lot about me that would be very valuable to them and other businesses - where and when I travel, where I shop and so on - but I have never found any sign that they sell it or use it, even before Data Protection and Privacy laws. The reason is that American Express knows that at the first hint of such action I would slice my credit card into small pieces.
I cannot do the same with government cards.

Ken Nielsen, Sydney, Australia

In Germany authorities have passed a law requiring Telcos to store all our connection data including where we are when we call with a mobile. If not even authorities can take care of our data, how can they be safe at private companies?

Stop collecting our data! Start respecting our rights!

Peter Kanzow, Bonn, Germany

Just five months in, Brown’s ‘presidency’ is in flat-spin and his economic reputation, open-government evangelism and IT epiphany lie in tatters.

Darling stay, Darling go, does it really matter? Gordon will just wheel-in another irrelevant sycophant to polish his ego.

The Labour Party is riding pillion with a middle-aged born again biker, recklessly abandoning cabinet government in Brown’s selfish and forlorn chase for political identity.

Len, Leicestershire,

This incompetency totally beggars belief – and we are expected to believe the ID card system is safe!
I have worked in IT for over 30 years and when ministers talk about government IT systems it is obvious they are only repeating phrases and have no idea what they are talking about. Alistair Darling’s assurance that ID card information will be protected by biometric data is rubbish. The cards would contain it. So, when this sort of information leak happens from the ID card system – and it will because government departments seem unable to implement elementary security measures – those who acquire the data will have much more information about each of us. The government’s record on large IT projects is hardly encouraging.
Gordon Brown intends to go on to 2009/10. I can't see how he can. The country can't survive his ministration for that long. This is the most inept government of all time.
It is sinking into its own mire, but not quickly enough. Let us have an election -- soon!

Mike