Database breached in Newcastle
Security warning to officialdom
News that the details of up to 54,000 people who used cards to pay Newcastle City Council for various services have been leaked to an address in the Middle East hardly comes as a surprise. The debit or credit card holders details were on an unsecured database on a computer belonging to Newcastle Council and more than 1.5m individual account records and 2m transaction records have been downloaded. The breech only came to light after an outside company was asked to test the security of systems in Newcastle.
It does not matter whether it is a government department, an NGO, a public service provider, or a local council the steady onward march of those who wish to build bigger and bigger databases puts all of our individual security and privacies at great risk. It does not matter whether the databases contain DNA profiles, fingerprints, names and addresses, credit card or debit cards, or national insurance numbers, until such time that the public can be assured that databases will employ secure 64 bit encryption on multiple sources we cannot be safe.
This argument applies to all National and local databases including the “big database” being planned by Gordon Brown’s government, the planned National ID Card scheme, and the NHS “super database”. The track record of officialdom in major IT schemes does not suggest that national security or individual privacy will benefit one little bit at all.
