AP Features, January 19th, 2008
A laptop containing the personal details of 600,000 new and prospective military recruits has been stolen, the Ministry of Defense said — the latest in a series of government blunders over data.
"The stolen laptop contained personal information relating to some 600,000 people who have either expressed an interest in, or have joined, the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force," the defense department said Friday.
The amount of information held on each individual varied from just a name to full background details including passport numbers, insurance numbers, family background information and medical numbers.
The ministry said it was urgently writing to around 3,500 people whose bank details were included on the database.
Police are investigating the theft.
The laptop theft is the latest in a spate of data loss headaches for the British government. Earlier Friday, a motorist said he found hundreds of documents bearing people's personal details scattered at a traffic circle.
Karl-Heinz Korzenientz uncovered the documents at exactly the same spot in southwest England where he found similar documents last year.
"If I was a criminal I would be having a heyday. It is ridiculous papers like these are so lightly lost — on two occasions," he said. The documents included social security files, bank statements and copies of passports.
Britain's government has been beset by information breaches since October when it admitted it had lost the confidential details about 25 million families when two CDs were lost in the mail by welfare officials.
Last month, Britain's top transport official said that a disk drive containing personal information on 3 million driving test candidates had been lost in the United States.
