Whoops.

• British PM Brown ‘profoundly’ regrets data security breach (CBC.ca)
• Brown orders data security checks (The Beeb)

Some time ago, I discussed the risks of ubiquitous surveillance — one of which was “misuse by unauthorized users”. Naively, I assumed that those unauthorized users would have to break into the surveillance system from outside (not that it would be terribly unusual for them to do so). I’d failed to account for standard-issue government incompetence.

Two computer discs that went missing while being sent from one government department to another contained names, addresses, birth dates, national insurance numbers and — in some cases — banking details for nearly half the country’s population.

So, that’s basically an identity theft kit for half the goddamn country. This is the sort of nightmarish scenario that would send most corporate types into a widening gyre of litigophobia, and rightly so. Of course, we’re talking about government here. As far as Brown’s concerned, the risk of some half-skilled goblin wrecking your financial life is “inconvenient”:

“I profoundly regret and apologize for the inconvenience and worries that have been caused to millions of families that receive child benefits,” Brown said. “We have a duty to do everything that we can to protect the public.”

That duty doesn’t extend to keeping track of their data, of course:

[Treasury chief Alistair Darling] said the delivery was not being tracked and was missing for three weeks before any alarm was raised.

Britain is the most surveilled country in the world. Its government is desperately trying to implement a national ID card and is expanding the scope of its DNA database just as fast as it possibly can. All of this in the name of “public safety”, of course.

I feel safe — because I live somewhere else.