Data Handling Procedures in Government: Interim Progress Report

[Dave Howe]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <875AA2A7-E286-4AF4-9C8A-9FA17522A05A@batten.eu.org>, Ian
>  Batten <igb@batten.eu.org> writes
>> Milliband has just been on the radio with the sort in intellectual
>>  insights you expect for the man notionally responsible for GCHQ:
>> ``you can't legislate against laptops being left in cars''.
> 
> In a very literal sense, I'm sure you can. Just like laws I presume 
> would control the leaving of firearms unattended in parked cars.

   You don't even need to legislate; just make it a government policy 
that anyone who leaves a laptop containing unencrypted sensitive data 
*anywhere* outside of government offices is guilty of gross misconduct 
and terminated without pension.

   I can't imagine any of these are running any other operating system 
than a recent release of MS Windows, so its just the effort of setting a 
Recovery Agent and turning on EFS.

   Making sure inter-city "internal mail" CD-R full of data are 
encrypted would take a little more work, but only a little. I think it 
is more likely to be due to the discouragement of encryption in general 
by governments in power, than any real lack of understanding of how easy 
it all is, that is responsible for this mess...