Ministry of Defence | Defence News | MOD confirms loss of recruitment data

[M J D Brown]

Commenting on my earlier tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the laptop 
loser is most probably a Personnel Security Officer doing security 
clearance vetting work , Ian Batten wrote on Saturday, January 19, 2008 
at 11:01 PM:

> On half a million punters?  At once?  That's quite a workload.  He 
> could do one a minute, working 24 hours a day, and be done by the 
> middle of next year.

Yup!  Saves the bother of extracting just those cases on which he is 
working!  Never mind the fundamental breach of security doctrine in 
aggregating more information that is essential for the task in hand.

> I presume the MoD has some systems for keeping, you know, `Top Secret' 
> information, like the location of the deterrent and stuff like that, 
> in some form
> other than plaintext in the boot of a car?  Or are the  military now 
> also joining
> the `piss up in a brewery' school of  competence?

I sometimes wonder whether it is part of the shoot-first-and think-later 
gung-ho attitude that seems to pervade so much of public administration 
these days.

Mike.
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