Loose Cannon: There Will Always Be A Data Breach

This past week, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday that indirectly commemorates one of the earliest splits between England and what would eventually become the United States. During the week, an incident within Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) served as a reminder that, as George Bernard Shaw put it, America and England are two countries separated by a common language.

Where American media outlets and politicians tend to tsk, their English counterparts harrumph. And a good solid harrumph will always trump the most turgid tsk.

Here’s a quick gloss on what happened: As part of his duties, a low-level clerk in Revenue and Customs downloaded child-benefit information on 25 million individuals — including children’s names and bank details — to two password-protected disks. These disks were then sent via a courier service, using an untraceable method, to the National Audit Office.

As might be expected, the disks never appeared at their destination. Whereabouts currently unknown.

Scary stuff, yes. But standard stuff from the missing-data trenches. So why focus on this case? Because the proof of the pudding is in the harrumph.

Take Shadow Home Secretary David Davis’s characterization of the whole affair as “the worst and most catastrophic loss of data in the history of humankind.” That’s not bad, considering there have been no reports of identities being compromised as a result of this. If someone moves a set of parcels and the disks turn up, this “catastrophic loss of data” is going to have a relatively painless resolution.

As for Davis’s time frame — the history of humankind — those who can remember the thrilling days of the last two yesteryears may recall that U.S. retailers have had credit card information from hundreds of millions of consumers compromised, and that data on 26.5 million U.S. servicemen went missing.

Some members of Parliament wove pop culture references into their questioning of Prime Minister Gordon Brown on this matter. According to one newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, Elfyn Llwyd asked “Is it time for Blackadder to say goodbye to [Chancellor Alistair] Darling?”

The Telegraph couldn’t resist an allusion of its own, observing that Brown’s response to Llwyd “made it sound as if one might as well ask if Wooster was going to get rid of Jeeves.”

The Daily Mail, a paper quite comfortable with the blood, love and rhetoric school of journalism, led off an editorial with “For sheer, mind-boggling incompetence and stupidity — even by the standards of today’s officialdom — the story of the missing child benefit records stands in a class of its own.”

The piece further noted “the entire child benefits database was dispatched from HMRC to the National Audit Office in the North East on two CDs, as if it were no more important than a mail-order catalogue.”

No more important than a mail-order catalogue? Et tu, Daily Mail?

Rival newspaper The Independent weighed in with an editorial observing “Even if it is not directly the Government’s fault, this is an episode that will be immortalised in our political folklore, entertaining a generation in the retelling.”

This story really doesn’t rise to the immortalization standard, unless there’s a cracking good bit of interpersonal naughtiness that hasn’t been reported yet. John Profumo and Christine Keeler aren’t in any danger of having their legend supplanted.

In a separate article, the Independent also noted the voluntary resignation of Paul Gray, the head of Revenue and Customs. According to that article, “Mr. Gray, a Leicester City football fan, keeps a small flock of Wensleydale sheep. He will now have a lot more time to tend them.”

Readers, my apologies. In the past I have neglected to note the agrarian pursuits of direct marketing newsmakers. I will correct this flaw in all future coverage.

In what may or may not be a related story, last week the Daily Mail announced the results of a “Britain’s Favourite Word” survey. What was the winning word, which beat out “love,” “mum” and “discombobulated”?

“Nincompoop.”

One can’t help think the survey results were influenced by current events.

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