In breaking news, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will announce at 1530 that HM Revenue and Customs has lost the data of 15 million child benefit recipients, and that the head of HMRC has resigned.
FIPR has been saying since last November’s publication of our report on Children’s Databases for the Information Commissioner that the proposed centralisation of public-sector data on the nation’s children was not only unsafe but illegal.
But that isn’t all. The Health Select Committee recently made a number of recommendations to improve safety and privacy of electronic medical records, and to give patients more rights to opt out. Ministers dismissed these recommendations, and a poll today shows doctors are so worried about confidentiality that many will opt out of using the new shared care record system.
The report of the Lords Science and Technology Committee into Personal Internet Security also poitned out a lot of government failings in preventing electronic crime – which ministers contemptuously dismissed. It’s surely clear by now that the whole public-sector computer-security establishment is no longer fit for purpose. The next government should replace CESG with a civilian agency staffed by competent people. Ministers need much better advice than they’re currently getting.
Developing …
(added later: coverage from the BBC, the Guardian, Channel 4, the Times, Computer Weekly and e-Health Insider; and here’s the ORG Blog)