I can't find a transcript of the Prime Minister's Press Conference speech from this morning, though if you want to sit through over an hour of it in online video format, there are a couple of links here. As a result, I can't put any context around his reported view that 'recent scandals to have hit the government, such as data loss and proxy donations, will be "quickly forgotten"'.
If that is really his view, it suggests that the issues I described in my previous post are at least as serious as I suggested, and possibly more so. One of the points I was trying to make was that, although it is all too easy to remain unaware of an identity breach (or, as Gordon Brown hopes, forget that it happened at all), that doesn't mean the risk of subsequent harm has gone away.
If we revisit the analogy between PII and fissile material, one way to look at this might be in terms of half-life... For some "isotopes" of PII, the risk of fraud can be mitigated over time, even if you're unaware of the compromise. For instance, if you get issued with a new credit card, the risk associated with any compromise of the previous card number drops off sharply. For others (such as your biometrics, National Insurance number or other details which can't be re-issued) the risk arising from an inappropriate disclosure might persist longer than you.
Maybe Mr Brown was hoping to plant subconscious seeds of forgetfulness in our brains while they are rendered mushy by end-of-year fatigue and the pre-Christmas frenzy... there to stratify through the mid-winter.
However much he might wish it from a PR perspective, Gordon's fond hope seems to me a rather rash counsel of carelessness. If, as a result, the data custodians don't learn from these breaches, and the data subjects forget to look for the signs of fraud, the future of our digital privacy is bleak indeed.
"Our Gord, Heaven cannot hold him, nor Earth sustain..."
![[RSS Newsfeed]](/themes/sotto/images/valid-rss.png)
![[This is a Roller site]](/themes/sotto/images/roller-logo.gif){kind=logo}
Presumably a case of "lost CD, soonest mended"...
Posted by Cuirthe on December 19, 2007 at 04:54 PM GMT+00:00 #
It's not a transcript, but quotes and summary can now be found at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7151634.stm .
Posted by Dave Walker on December 19, 2007 at 05:11 PM GMT+00:00 #