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Britain loses convicts’ data

Personal information on every prisoner in England and Wales has been lost, the British government said on Thursday, including the names, dates of birth and addresses of more than 30,000 repeat offenders.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office, the country’s crime-fighting body, said a contractor mislaid an unencrypted memory stick containing the names and dates of birth of 84,000 inmates — England and Wales’ entire prison population.

The stick also carried the home addresses of 33,000 criminals who had committed six or more recordable convictions over the last 12 months, she said, along with information pertaining to 10,000 of what she called “prolific and priority offenders.” She spoke anonymously in line with departmental policy.

The damaging data loss is the latest in a humiliating series of blunders to humble the British government, which is completing plans for an ambitious national identification card program and expanding its DNA database — already the largest in the world per capita.

The news is particularly embarrassing because PA Consulting Group, the contractor identified as being responsible for the loss, had previously been chosen by the Home Office to consult on the ID card program.

Millions of names and personal details from across the country have been reported lost in the past year and in June, the government published in a high-level report on its work to improve its data handling practices.

The report said the government was limiting the use of removable media such as memory sticks and ensuring that sensitive data placed on such media would be encrypted.

The Home Office spokeswoman refused to say whether putting prisoners’ personal information on an unencrypted memory stick broke the rules, saying only that authorities were investigating whether PA Consulting had followed its obligations.

She said that further transfers of such data to the management consultancy had been halted.

The spokeswoman said the Home Office first heard of the loss when PA Consulting informed officials on Monday. The group confirmed the loss on Tuesday, she said, adding that the department had informed the relevant authorities as soon as possible.

However, London’s Metropolitan Police said they were not notified of the loss until Thursday morning — two days after the Home Office knew for certain the memory stick was missing.

A spokesman for the force said officers from Scotland Yard’s Specialist and Economic Crimes Unit were meeting with PA Consulting to review what happened. He blamed the loss on a member of PA Consulting’s staff and said there was no formal investigation because police were not treating it as a crime.
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