Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has had to announce another massive data loss by the UK government: personal details of three million driving test applicants have gone missing.


Kelly has noted that no bank details were in the missing data. That's not the point. This was confidential information and the government had a duty of care to protect it.

Kelly has noted that compared to the amount of data the government handle the scale of this loss is small. That's not the point. To an individual whose privacy has been breached such statistics are irrelevant.

Kelly has noted improved procedures for the future. That's not the point. Even with the best procedures, accidents will happen.


The real point of this latest revelation is that no government, no matter how well meaning, can be trusted to protect individual privacy. We should be tightening rules on internal government data sharing rather than relaxing them. The government should be collecting less data on us, not more.

And, of course, the government must permanently abandon all plans for compulsory national identity cards and a huge, intrusive National Identity Register.

Labels: privacy, Ruth Kelly, ukpolitics