Monday 5 April 2010

Barnet council fails to cost residents half a million

...on this occasion, but if they lose any more schoolchildren's data after 6 April they might be liable for a fine of up to £500,000. Currently, the maximum fine for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act is just £5,000 but it is going up from tomorrow. Phew! That was a close one.

Read a Tech Watch website report about the change here.
This is what Barnet council is saying on its website about its recent data loss.

1 comment:

Don't Call Me Dave said...

The problem with fining local authorities £500,000 is that they will simply pass the cost on to taxpayers. If the people responsible for the data loss had to pay the fine out of their own pockets, you can be sure that they wouldn’t be so careless in future.

Whilst it is, of course, important to take steps to ensure there can never be a similar reoccurrence of this security breach, the larger question remains unanswered. Why does the state deem it necessary to hold so much data on private citizens, and why do we just sit there and put up with this unwarranted and unnecessary invasion of our privacy?