Look at this in a wider context.

Every department

Every Company

EVERY DATABASE

Is going to be distributed to anyone who really wanted the contents.

With all the issues with actually keeping data safe, I think this actually prooves the average human beings inability to be trusted with the data (or trusted with access to the data)

I would rather go to jail and have my bio readings forceably taken from me, than hand them over to the Government for their fucking ID card

Now I understand govuk's constant attempts to gain and store evermore information about us, it's to maintain a balance to offset the information they keep losing.

How do they quantify it, by weight?

Maybe it is time for civil servants and government contractors to be hit in the pocket every time they make a cock up that compromises the population.

If you run a business and you screw up it costs you, why shouldn't it cost them?

Yet another governmental oxymoron.

But then again, aren't they all!

This lot wouldn't know 'Justice' if it came up and bit them on the arse.

Which, hopefully, it will do soon.

It's only 28 days they get locked up for currently isn't it? No matter, that'll do. Give them 28 days holiday in an 8x6 holding cell and see how they feel.

"all the data was subsequently recovered"

So that's OK then...

Do they understand anything? T.Blair was famously computer illiterate (still is, no doubt) but did they all have to copy him?

Can we have a 'blithering idiot' icon, please?

This isn't exactly a "man bites dog" story, is it? Just another tedious episode in the long running saga of NuLabour's incompetence as they try to implement their wet dream database-society. Can we have an icon with the letters "NL" imposed on an image of a bucket of shit?

I'm a bit doubtful about this. Would it be better if a government with such aspirations was even slightly competent? I think an incompetent police state is less dangerous than a competent one.

(I have lived in Belgium,Germany and Italy...)

"Maybe it is time for civil servants and government contractors to be hit in the pocket every time they make a cock up that compromises the population."

One phrase: "ministerial responsibility"