Losing Personal Info On A Laptop Could Get You Charged

Posted by Zonk on Monday November 19, @06:10AM
from the going-to-need-handcuffs dept.

E5Rebel writes "The UK's data protection watchdog has called for legislation that would punish corporate or government officials with access to the public's personal data ... who lose it. Unencrypted laptops with this personal information which are lost or stolen will see their owners facing criminal charges. 'HM Revenue and Customs is among the organisations that have recently suffered high profile data security breaches as a result of laptops being lost or stolen. The HMRC laptop containing taxpayer data was encrypted - but other organisations have often failed to encrypt their machines.'"

[+] privacy, government, it, security, uk (tagging beta)