The HMRC seems strangely confident that the missing CDs are still "on Government property". I say 'strangely' in that, from the information made public so far, the last sighting appears to have been when they were consigned to a commercial parcel carrier.
As you may remember from a previous post, the business of designing a system so you can reliably spot stolen records once they're out in the wild is by no means a simple one. With that in mind, I wonder what forensic measures the authorities are currently relying on.
I've done my bit. As far as I can see, the disks are not yet up for sale on eBay.
There's also, of course, the possibility that they have been found, but not by anyone ill-intentioned... but I suppose a reward can't be offered without rather undermining the 'still on Government property' assertion.
![[RSS Newsfeed]](/themes/sotto/images/valid-rss.png)
![[This is a Roller site]](/themes/sotto/images/roller-logo.gif){kind=logo}
Too late - they have already been put up for auction (well, spoofed, anyway) an the aution was taken down. Its contents are preserved (hopefully, for posterity) at www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/21/hmarc_ebay_auction/ .
A further note - latest breaking news (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7106987.stm ) indicates that HMRC believe that the missing discs "are still on Government property". The trouble with losing something - even if it's still on your property - is that you can't prove it's on your property, since you can't produce it as a result of it having passed outside the scope of your handling procedures. Therefore, as you can't prove it's on your property, you can only initiate processes which do not assume that it is.
Posted by Dave Walker on November 22, 2007 at 06:18 PM GMT+00:00 #
Yes, and even if it's locked in an HMRC filing cabinet you cant prove how many copies have been made. And if the records are worth, as the FT suggests, up to £200 each on the black market then 7.25m of them is worth more than all the Permanent Secretaries pension plans put together - a substantial amount of 1,500,000,000 ££££ and truly mind-boggling amount of sadly devlued $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$s. And that's worth making a copy of.
Even if the CXOs seem not to understand the value of our personal data you can bet your iPod that plenty of people in the lesser paid ranks are more streetwise.
Posted by William on November 22, 2007 at 11:56 PM GMT+00:00 #