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ID cards under fire after
HMRC debacle
Tom Espiner
ZDNet.co.uk
Wednesday November 21, 2007
The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, attacked the
government on Tuesday following its disclosure of the loss of
the details of 25 million child-benefit claimants, and called
into question its competence to safeguard data collected for the
controversial national ID cards scheme.
"This will be the final blow for the ambitions of the government
for the national ID cards scheme — they simply cannot be
trusted with people's personal details," Osborne said. "Never
mind the lack of vision — get a grip and deliver a basic
level of competence."
Two password-protected disks, containing the names, addresses,
dates of birth, national insurance numbers and bank and building
society account details of everybody in the UK who claims and
receives child benefits, were lost in transit from Her Majesty's
Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to the National Audit Office (NAO).
The courier was TNT.
(Article continues below)
"Let us be clear about this catastrophic mistake,"
continued Osborne. "The names and addresses of every child
in the country, and the bank account details of parents, carers,
and guardians have been lost. Half the country will be anxious
for the safety of their family, and the security of their bank
accounts."
Chancellor Alistair Darling denied that this would put paid to
the ID cards scheme, however, insisting that, had the compromised
data been linked to biometrics, it would have been more secure.
"The key thing with ID cards is that information is protected
by personal biometric information," said Darling. "The
problem is we do not have that protection [on the lost HMRC information].
ID cards match up biometric information with information held
— there would be a biometric lock with the ID cards system."
Full
article here.
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