The government is proposing a national ID card with an associated database giving information on everyone in the UK. If you want to know how secure this will be, you only have to look at how they mislaid 25 million child benefit records:
Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing.
The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25m people.
Chancellor Alistair Darling said there was no evidence the data had fallen into criminal hands – but urged people to monitor their bank accounts. Mr Darling apologised for what he described as an “extremely serious failure on the part of HMRC to protect sensitive personal data entrusted to it in breach of its own guidelines”.
Their national database of all children, ContactPoint, will no doubt be every bit as secure as the ID card database and the child benefit data. Not that the government could give a toss, since their kids will be exempt from the ContactPoint database.
Amused Cynicism 