HOT NEWS

This week’s hot issue has been on the first page for much of the week. It focuses on Alastair Darling and the loss of the personal details of more than 25 million people through the downloading, writing to CD, and posting of this data. This is issue is large enough to even force the Prime Minister to apologise.

Said to be a mistake made by a junior civil servant, though apparently with the knowledge of his superiors, this has put the families whose details are on the two CDs in serious risk of being victims of fraud, if they fall into the hands of criminals - with the potential rewards for getting hold of the information in to the billions of pounds. This looks especially bad when the CDs were not encrypted, and protected only by a password - something that could easily have been done. But why so much data sent when the National Audit Office wanted only some of it and not the sensitive stuff?

To save about £5,000.

Questions have also been raised about whether Alastair Darling can survive as Chancellor for much longer, considering the number of bungles and examples general incompetence occurring, or at least emerging, under his tenure. This issue is a big issue for us all - what precautions are the government taking with the personal details it requires of us?