In another case of lost or stolen data, the British government is investigating the loss of a memory stick loaded with unencrypted personal data on thousands of prisoners, including names, addresses and release dates. The data was said to have been housed securely but an external contractor apparently loaded it onto a memory stick which has since gone missing.
"This was data that was being held in a secure form, but was downloaded onto a memory stick by an external contractor," Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said.
"It runs against the rules set down both for the holding of government data and set down by the external contractor and certainly set down in the contract that we had with the external contractor."
