With all the news stories about peoples confidential data being lost, stolen, or seemingly vaporized, I wasn't too surprised to read about the loss of a hard drive containing personal details of three million candidates for the UK driving theory test which has gone missing from a "secure facility" in, amazingly enough, Iowa! That's right, bloody Iowa!
Reading that Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has only just told the House of Commons the hard drive went missing in May, but 'only' includes name, address, phone number and email - no financial data. I can't imagine why any British organization would have been squirrelling this data away anywhere, never mind in Iowa.
There may be a rationale for retention of test results for future analysis, but the personal details of the candidates are of negligible relevance, and the long term retention of such data seems neither proportionate nor sensible. Is this simply another demonstration of the ever increasing obsession with retaining all forms of data that we seem to be increasingly engulfed in? Poor old George Orwell must be spinning at a high rate of knots right now!
George Parker
Blogging for:
Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 17 Nov 2009
Total Posts: 831
