Just a quick post because I really should be getting on with human rights revision just now, but I saw this headline on the top of a UK Home Office press release from a couple of years ago:

Talking CCTV brings voice of authority to the street

Did no one in the office feel like spinning this one a bit to play down the authoritarian side a bit?

Why are the words “the data breach is the latest in a series of embarrassing blunders regarding government information” now common-place on BBC News? Some user-names and passwords on a USB flash drive have been left in a pub car-park. The thing which I don’t fully understand is why such data is placed on portable drives in the first place. It is perfectly possible to store the data on secure servers and transfer it using an encrypted network connection. Even when the network that a computer is attached to is not secure (for example public Wi-Fi in a café), VPN tunnels can link into a secure network, and provide the protection that is needed.

Any computers which are taken out of safe offices should have their hard-drives encrypted, and smart-phones should have a kill-switch on them so they can be rendered useless (and data can be wiped) as soon as they are reported missing.

I imagine those higher-up in the hierarchy are all too aware of the problems, and trying to do something about them, but so long as there are plenty of people who need to handle sensitive data, but have no clue about security, I have a feeling that these things will continue to pop up in the news over and over again.

When, on Tuesday, I wrote a twitter update saying: “I hope my bank can make it to the end of the week.“, I was joking! Well the Royal Bank of Scotland has made it to the end of the week, but only just. On Monday, the UK government is going to take a majority stake in it.

By the way, I think this is possibly the first post I have written on the financial turmoil (I can’t stand the term “credit crunch”). Don’t know how I managed to last this long.