The personal details of up to 130,000 of Britain's most prolific criminals have been lost by the home office, it emerged last night.
A memory stick containing the names, addresses and dates of birth of the current and former crooks went missing on Monday.
It included data on up to 10,000 convicts classified as the country's most serious offenders.
The Conservatives labelled the breach scandalous and warned that it could lead to criminals suing the government. Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'This is a massive failure of duty.
Quite what is it with Labour & losing our data? Almost every part of government leaks like the Titanic. Hell I bet the Russians need not send spies over here, they just wait long enough and the information will just be leaked or left on the train.
Inept wankers the lot of them.'What is more scandalous is that it is not the first time the government has been shown to be completely incapable of protecting the integrity of highly sensitive data.
'The British taxpayer will be absolutely outraged if they are made to pick up the bill for compensation to serious criminals.'
The lost information was copied from the JTrack database, used by police and other agencies to monitor criminals when they are out of custody.
It comprises 84,000 prisoners, 33,000 names on the police national computer and up to 10,000 criminals classified as prolific and other priority offenders.
It was misplaced by 'an external contractor', the home office said.
A spokesman for home secretary Jacqui Smith said: 'A full investigation is being conducted.'
3 people have spoken:
"The personal details of up to 130,000 of Britain's most prolific criminals have been lost by the home office".
Well 1) They were lost by that most darling of things to the Tories- a private company, not the home office. And 2) So the fuck what? If these are, as you say, the most prolific criminals, fuck 'em.
Would it be cynical of me to suggest that all these laptops and fancy memory sticks aren't so much as lost as wiped and sold down the pub?
Anon I think that they are most likely sold down the pub as most state employees regard theft as just "topping up their wages"
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