If they kept making the same idiotic mistake, do you really believe they would keep telling us about it ?.

Here's Lord Tebbits view on lost data

It's a popular pearl of wisdom. Indeed, when Churchill forbade several of his ministers and generals from flying in the same aeroplane, he joked that you should 'never put all your baskets in one egg'. As usual, he was right.

So why, in this digital age, when mountains of sensitive information can be stored on a single disk, and lost as easily, does everyone seem so eager to ignore that elementary counsel?

On this occasion, it was customers of American Express, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland who were left reeling by someone extraordinary ineptitude. The personal details - including names, addresses, mobile numbers, account numbers, sort codes, mothers' maiden names and even signatures - of more than a million of them were stored on the misplaced computer, which has been described as a 'data thief 's treasure chest'.

What struck me most about this elementary lapse of security was how could any professional organisation allow such a vast quantity of sensitive data to be stored on a single easily-portable computer in the first place? It beggars belief.

But the banks' embarrassment might come as a relief to ministers who have just admitted that the 'unfit for purpose' Home Office recently lost the records of 127,000 criminals.

I can just see Jacqui Smith, the smug and complacent Home Secretary, preparing her excuses for the next time she mislays (or allows to be stolen) the confidential information her ministry has gathered about us. 'Well, just look at the Royal Bank of Scotland,' she will no doubt claim. 'It even happens to the private sector. It's just one of those things.'

Well, here's news: it shouldn't. Indeed, far from being just 'one of those things', electronic data loss is fast becoming an unmitigated, and all-too-frequent, disaster that threatens each and every one of us in modern Britain.

It all goes back to eggs and baskets. Modern data-processing systems now involve placing massive concentrations of information in one place.
This is all well and good - enabling us to replace mountains of paperwork with a single computer chip.

But when the authorities gather highly sensitive and confidential information about us and then choose to store that information on such a device, they place us all in grave peril. For what happens when that little chip, or disk, or memory stick is misplaced - and then falls into the wrong hands?

Among the demoralised remains of what, not long ago, was the finest civil service in the world, this seems to happen all too frequently.

And as I know, those dealing with such disasters are shameless in covering up their own appalling incompetence.

Back in 2002, I was tipped off that the processing of information collected by the Criminal Records Bureau was being subcontracted to a firm in India - beyond the reach of British security laws.

This was a serious case of electronic data mismanagement, but for eight weeks the Home Office failed to answer my questions on the issue.They were not being idle; they were simply rewriting the contracts to make it look like all was well and that everything was above board. It didn't seem to matter that sending sensitive information to a country that was beyond UK data protection laws might result in a breach of confidentiality and have very real consequences for British citizens.

As far as their contractors were concerned, it mattered only that India was the cheapest place to get the job done. And damn the consequences.

But there are even more important issues here. Just because the Government can gather vast amounts of personal information about us does not mean that they should.

And it certainly doesn't mean that they should treat it with contempt by storing it in a way that makes it so easy to steal, or simple to lose.

Constantly, the authorities are gathering more and more information about us. Some of this is justified.

Few, except for human rights lawyers, would argue, for example, that the proper security, intelligence and police services should be prevented from adequately protecting the nation against terrorists and international crime syndicates.

But the Government doesn't stop there. Indeed, it is now putting every detail of our medical records onto a vast centralised system which will be wide open to misuse.

As we have seen before, once information is stored electronically, it is only a matter of time before hackers find their way in.

Councils are now encouraged to snoop in our wheelie bins and record what we throw away. Satellites are used at great expense to check whether we have illegally built a conservatory or garden shed.

Hordes of CCTV cameras monitor our every move and record us as we go about our private business. It is bad enough that we are watched, counted, weighed, timed and tracked from the cradle to the grave.

But it is intolerable that the information we are now required to hand over to the tax authorities, the town hall, the NHS and the police is routinely stored, and improperly protected, in digital format - especially when it is then shifted between departments and companies without our consent or knowledge.

The bad news is that unchecked, things will get only worse. Next, our masters in Brussels will be in on the act and will soon be able to poke their sticky fingers into our police and security files, leading to yet more opportunities for loss and theft.

But the irony is that for all the information the Government now stores on us, it is no wiser as to the real state of the nation.

Whenever we ask how many people cross our borders, how many have stayed when they should have left, how many foreign criminals have escaped deportation, or how much they claim in benefits, our great, all-seeing, all-knowing system fails to produce the answers.

The fastidious electronic data gatherers, it seems, are interested only in the innocent.

So what will our enemies make of all this ineptitude? And does Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Scotland who, in his spare time, doubles as Defence Secretary, have any idea how vulnerable these data systems make us look - or how good our enemies may be at penetrating them?

Lord knows. But the fact is with 'data management' taking over from human judgment and accountability, both in government and the private sector, we can no longer expect the most private and detailed information about our lives to be treated with anything like the care and confidentiality we would wish.

And that is a very real disgrace.
Tarn Lass