View From The Porch: We're from the government, and we're here to...

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

We're from the government, and we're here to...

...misplace all your private data.

Whoops.

Well, what do you expect from people who can't get a letter across town in a week?

13 comments:

Mark said...: Now, now! There's no indication that this data has fallen into the hands of criminals.

After all, the revenue never received it.; 5:48 AM, November 21, 2007
DBA Dude said...: It gets better, they had already sent it once before earlier in the year. When the latest copies went missing they sent another copy (registered) which arrived.

Some of us have to lived in this fecked up country.; 7:16 AM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: A cynic might ask exactly what level of password protection (mentioned in the article) was applied to those disks.

Might even ask if the data was encrypted (NOT mentioned in the article).

But I'm not a cynic.

Nah, not me. The government is here to help and protect...; 8:14 AM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: "Two...discs...was sent...by internal post system operated by the courier TNT. The package was not recorded or registered."

Royal Mail, even privatized and contracted-out as it is, didn't do this one: the Old Post Office joke may have to wait. Even UPS drops one once in a while.

We might well ask, though, what the future holds for an agency that cannot make subject and verb agree in number.; 8:31 AM, November 21, 2007
Tam said...: I wasn't make a Post Office joke, I was making a government joke (which is a redundant word pairing if ever I've heard one.); 9:00 AM, November 21, 2007
BobG said...: "I wasn't make a Post Office joke, I was making a government joke (which is a redundant word pairing if ever I've heard one.)"

And the more the government screws up, the less funny it is for the people.; 9:41 AM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: I was in the room one day when government got all efficient and sent a multi-tera data package through the ether instead of wasting all that postage. In more senses of the word than one, there was no redundancy.

"Shayna, they bought their ticket: I say let 'em crash." The appropriate level of cycicism here might be a chuckle-up-the-sleeve, since the aggrieved parties are all (presumably voluntary) recipients of Crown child welfare. Is that "your private data"? Some good could come of it yet. A bad kind of good, you know: Franklin got fired for reading the Governor's mail.; 9:50 AM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: I have had both a former employer and my present employer notify me in the past year that my "personal data" has been stolen. Both time, on laptops. Maybe they should stop putting important info on laptops, since they seem to get stolen an awful lot.; 10:01 AM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: "We are the Government. You can trust us. Do what we say. We only have your best intrests in mind. We would never do anything to harm you. We know what is best for you. This is only a temporary tax/tax increase. We will never lie to you. You don't need any weapons for we will protect you. Bend over and spead your cheeks. This won't hurt a bit.We are the Government."

Tok; 12:24 PM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: "After this disaster how can the public possibly have confidence in the vast centralised databases needed for the compulsory ID card scheme."

Y'know, were I inclined to believe in competence, I'd say this was orchestrated by somebody with a lick of sense and a devious mind. A subversive effort to undermine national ID scheme.

Unfortunately, I make it a practice never to assume any sort of competence from a government slug until that individual demonstrates otherwise.; 1:08 PM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: Benny Hill would have had so much fun with this...; 3:19 PM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: I'm curious if a similar list of everybody in, say, NYC who receives child benefits will likewise fit on a couple of CDs.

Could be a useful metric when trying to illustrate the sheer size of the bureaucracy that a government run health system here would entail.; 4:11 PM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...: You cannot "trust" a government. Ours, theirs, any of them. You can only trust a person.

Liberals do not understand this at all.; 8:04 PM, November 23, 2007