Grilled Brown

Following on nicely from the post below, Gordon Brown is currently being "grilled" by other politicians about just what the hell the Government is doing.

So far, the main thrust of his answers are that both Public and private businesses need to improve the care and security of data. No shit, Sherlock! Or, and here's a thought, stop trying to collate so much data. Because if there's similar incompetence in the running of the proposed National ID Card scheme, what am I supposed to do if you fuck it up? Get new fingerprints? New eyes?

It's not as if the systems that are currently in place do the fucking job they're supposed to, is it? The "re-appearing canoeist" John Darwin seems to have used a scam first shown (in a FUCKING FILM!) in 1973, whereby you find someone born roughly when you were, but who died before the age where they'd be likely to get a passport, get a copy of their birth certificate (from the Government, for a fee, natch) and then use that to apply for a passport in their name.

Shouldn't there be, perhaps, a check to see if the person applying is also on the Register of Deaths? You know, just in case they're stupid enough to use a film plot? Hmm? You wouldn't need a flashy new IT system costing billions of pounds for that, would you?

Which is handy, as pretty much every one of the new IT systems doesn't do the job it was designed to do. I was entertained, though not surprised, to discover there was another failure I hadn't heard about: Libra. The Register mentioned it back in February, but I didn't realise then that the system cannot process the information needed for the surcharge (all criminals in England and Wales should pay a £15 "victims' surcharge" towards services) as the system, launched in April (months behind schedule) only recognises those who are fined.

He also contends that "we are not alone" in being completely clueless in securing personal data. This is true, there are literally hundreds of other examples worldwide of data breaches. Some commentators (normally spotted when the sun reflects off their tin-foil hat) have suggested that these breaches are actually the US Government collecting data on the population of the planet. I would personally suspect it's having clueless people in IT positions as a cost-saving measure, but I can offer you no proof.

Not that that stopped the Government using "we have no reason to believe the discs were stolen" when HMRC lost 25 million records. He also says that on the back of the HMRC debacle, "no one has lost any money". No, not yet they haven't you duplicitous cunt, but as there's YEARS before some of them will be old enough to earn money, that's hardly a comfort is it?