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Big Brother's Balls-Up
A few months ago, we condemned government plans to put the personal and financial details of every man, woman and child in Britain on a computer database. Alongside proposals to introduce Identity Cards and a whole swathe of measures dedicated to limiting rights and increasing the surveillance of citizens, EURSOC worried that the government is providing itself with the tools to create a fascist state.
It may be difficult to imagine Gordon Brown as Emperor Palpatine (or is it?) but who knows what a future government might use legislation introduced by the current lot?
Little did we know that less than a year later, some idiot would burn the details of 25 million people on a pair of CDs and pop them in the post, where they were promptly lost.
Perhaps its not Stormtroopers we should be worried about, but Keystone Cops.
UPDATE: Alice Miles gets it in the Times:
"Idiots. Utter, unbelievable, jaw-dropping, unpardonable idiots. It is beyond farce, past comprehension, criminally irresponsible and beneath contempt.
"All those lectures from government and authorities about keeping our personal data safe; every statement ever made about the security of the proposed NHS database of everybody's personal medical records; each claim that the Children's Database containing all their personal details will somehow make our kids safer; and of course each and every promise about the safety of the national identity register — exposed as quite, quite worthless. Because as soon as you put it on a computer, a bloke in an office can download it and stick it in an envelope and send your most personal details and mine and our children's across the country with a dodgy courier."
