By Andy McCue, 5 December 2007 12:41
NEWS
The government is offering a £20,000 reward to anyone who finds the missing HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) discs containing 25 million child benefit records, after the initial police search failed to find them.
The search for the missing CDs has been led by a core team of 47 detectives and computer experts from the Metropolitan Police's Specialist and Economic Crime Command.
Now that the main search has finished without finding the CDs, the Met has appealed to all staff at HMRC, the National Audit Office and the Treasury to check at work and "other locations" for the discs. HMRC courier TNT will also ask its staff to help with the search for the CDs.
Security from A to Z
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A is for Antivirus
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Q is for Questions
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In addition to the police appeal, HMRC is now offering a reward of "up to £20,000" for information leading to the safe return of the CDs - despite the fact acting Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable last week claimed the data on the discs could be worth up to £1.5bn to criminals on the black market.
A statement from the Met said: "The enquiry has been particularly challenging due to how common compact discs are within offices, the number and size of the offices requiring searches and the number of organisations where the package may have travelled through."
The Met maintained there is no evidence the lost data has ended up in the hands of criminals.
Data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner has also revealed that a number of private and public sector organisations have come forward and admitted problems with data security following the HMRC breach.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
when someone finds them
a) how do you know they haven't been copied
b) how do you know the discs that get handed in haven't been created freshly just to claim the reward
c) how do you know these particular discs aren't copies of the originals
d) £20K reward when they are supposedly worth £1.5Bn to criminals ? you're counting on a hell of a lot of integrity there
2. Roger Huffadine
OK - so IF I did know where the disks are you think I'm going to give them up for £20k?
Firstly I'm going to be asked why I didn't let on before.
Then I'm going to be prosecuted or wasting Police time,
And I'm going to be hounded by the media.
Then all the Charities will want their slice of my stash.
Nah.. just keep the disks - find someone from the Chinese Secret Service and flog the data - why China? - 'cos they still know how to keep secrets and are hungry for this type of information.
3. Richard
Is that £20,000 "tax free"?
4. Graham Coles
As the great Terry Gilliam once wrote: "Up to includes the value zero".
So the HMRC want their CDs back and are willing to pay between nothing and 20,000 pounds for them.
No problem, make a backup copy and flog them on the internet after getting the reward.
What else can you expect from a department with a string of about four serious personal data breeches that keeps insisting in its statements that 'We take the utmost care with personal information.'
5. Nick Cole
And after all this fuss does anyone seriously think that the CDs haven't been 'destroyed' or buried somewhere? Is whoever has them going to admit to it?