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http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/65419/Forces-personnel-hard-drive-missing

Note: MOD=Ministry Of Defence

MPS 'FURIOUS' AS MOD DATA MISSING
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Data of Armed Forces personnel has gone missing

Friday October 10,2008

MPs have demanded a "cultural change" in public sector data handling as it emerged that a computer hard drive possibly containing the private details of Armed Forces personnel was missing.

In the latest Whitehall data embarrassment, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said its IT contractor, EDS, could not account for the portable drive.

It could contain the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth, next-of-kin and driving licence details of up to 100,000 Army, Navy and RAF personnel.

An urgent investigation by the MoD is under way to establish what the drive actually contains. Officials stressed that they were currently treating the case as a "potential" data loss.

Ministers are understood to be "furious" at the development and insistent that it is resolved as quickly as possible.

Downing Street described the loss of the data as "regrettable".

It is only the latest information security breach to hit the MoD.

In July it admitted 658 of its laptops had been stolen over the past four years and 26 portable memory sticks containing classified information had been either stolen or misplaced since January.

Tory MP Nigel Evans, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Identity Fraud, said: "This is yet another example of the serious implications the loss of personal data can have for the general public.

The Liberal Democrats described the loss as a "disturbing breach of security" and called for an urgent inquiry into how it had occurred.