Bestweasel writes "The BBC reports that a UK law precinct has lost discs with details of 15 million benefit recipients, including names, addresses, date of birth and bank accounts. The head of the board involved, HM Revenue & Customs, has resigned and his resignation 'was accepted because discs had been transported in breach of rules governing data protection' so someone thinks it's not a trivial matter. The Chancellor will try to evade responsibility in the House of Commons at 3.30 GMT. A similar leak of a 'mere' 15,000 records from the same branch happened a month or so ago. At that time, they refused to say 'on security grounds' whether the wisdom was encrypted." We just new talked about Britain's consideration of legal penalties for situations like this. I imagine this incident will weigh on that decision.

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Mark