On the doormat today was my personal letter of apology from the Acting Chairman of HMRC. In it, he says that my personal data is "likely to still be on Government property", and that there is "no evidence that it is in the possession of anyone else". Given that he's taken the trouble to write to me personally to apologise, I suppose it would be a bit churlish to ask just what leads him to those attractive but optimistic conclusions.
He also lists exactly which pieces of my personal information are not necessarily in anyone else's hands: "my name, my children's names and dates of birth, my address, my National Insurance number and, where relevant, the details of the bank or building society into which my Child Benefit is or was paid".
I love that "where relevant" phrase. The idea that they're only losing disclosing my details "where relevant" is of enormous comfort to me, even if there's no explanation of where (or why) that information would (or might not) be relevant. I suppose it would be nice to know whether my bank account details were considered relevant in this case... but again, let's not be churlish in the face of his obvious concern.
The letter goes on "as is usual in these circumstances, if you are the innocent victim of financial fraud you will not have to pay". I find that immensely reassuring. It's clear that he has a firm grip on what is 'usual in these circumstances', and knows exactly what I should do whenever an entire national database goes missing. I assume he's been through it all before, which is excellent.
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"it would be a bit churlish to ask just what leads him to those attractive but optimistic conclusions"
What leads him is the need to sleep easier at night, at least until they find the disks in a skip in Warrington.
I liked the report of police officers scouring TNT premises. Looking for what, exactly? Perhaps we can rewrite the old needle/haystack analogy: "Like looking for a Jiffy bag in a TNT depot".
Posted by John Sandell on November 27, 2007 at 01:18 PM GMT+00:00 #
John, that's a shocking and unjustified allegation and you should be ashamed of yourself. TNT have said that no-one has been able to show them any evidence that the disks ever entered their possession...
I'm sorry, but if you want to re-write the saying, you're going to have to phrase it more carefully if you want to avoid expensive litigation. I suggest:
"Like looking for an auditable subset of entries in a 25m-record database"
Posted by Robin Wilton on November 27, 2007 at 01:28 PM GMT+00:00 #