Think your government is technologically inept? If you happen to live in England, you’d probably be more correct than the rest of us. Sometime last week it seems the British government has lost a flash drive containing data on all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales and “30,000 people with six or more criminal convictions in the past year.” Theoretically this wouldn’t be such a horrible thing, you’d think a government would have several layers of security on a flash drive in just such a case. Apparently, this flash drive had none, it was completely unencrypted.
This isn’t the first time this has happened to the British government, which would just add to the embarrassment. Hopefully this leak will at least teach them, and others, something important: data security. If you have sensitive data on a flash drive, it would be a wise idea to use some sort of encryption software like Truecrypt, which is free and open source. Of course there are other options, but that would seem the most reasonable, at least the cheapest. So, if you’re ever carrying around the names, addresses, and expected release dates on the entire prison population of your nation, make sure it’s well protected in case you “forget” it somewhere or something.
Read [New York Times]
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