Big Brother Compromises Half of Brits' I.D. Data

Tony Blair's successor Gordon Brown is just as gung-ho on national I.D. cards for every Brit — and on fingerprinting every British child and every pub-goer — as his erstwhile boss. The nation may rest assured that citizens' personal and biometric data will be kept safe, Brown gravely intoned last year:

"We should do all in our power to prevent you or I having our identity stolen or abused, and to ensure that, for each of us, our identity is secure and protected."

Right. Here's how that's working out, as reported today by Reuters:

The personal details of half of all Britons have been mislaid by the government, Chancellor Alistair Darling said on Tuesday, in another major blow to an administration reeling from the Northern Rock banking debacle. The Conservatives accused Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government of laying 25 million people open to identity theft and bank fraud, ridiculing its competence.

The head of Britain's tax authority, Paul Gray, quit earlier and Darling described the incident as a "serious failure" on the part of the revenue collector, already embroiled in two other breaches of security. Darling told parliament two discs containing information on 25 million Britons had disappeared after being sent through HMRC's courier, Dutch mail and parcel company TNT NV, and a police investigation was underway. There was no sign of fraud at present, he said.

"The missing information contains details of all child benefit recipients: records for 25 million individuals and 7.25 million families," Darling said.