- Friday, 9 January 2009
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Why isn't New Year's Eve always on a Friday? - Adamson Rust
Scotland loses 999 data
THE AMBULANCE SERVICE in Scotland has lost a disk containing the 999 call details of one million people who have used the service.
The disk was being delivered by courier TNT, and went missing while in transit from the Emergency Medical Dispatch Centre in Paisley.
On the disk were records of every call made to the ambulance service in the West of Scotland since February 2006.
Also included were the name of the caller and person they called on behalf of, the date of birth of the person called on behalf of, the location of the incident, and the phone number used to call for assistance.
There was also the names of the ambulance-service staff who dealt with the call, including the call taker, dispatcher and names of the ambulance crew.
All really good stuff for a would-be ID thief who might want to spam people for health insurance scams.
However the Scottish Ambulance Service insisted there was little danger that people's 999 details could be exposed, as the disk had been encrypted and was protected by a password and industry-standard encryption.
All the data was scrambled so that it should not be possible to match any of the information against an individual.
Anyone who nicked the disk would find it only useful as a beer mat. Still not a pointless effort, then. ยต
L'Inq
ZDNET
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TNT have lost the disc Not the Scottish Ambulance Service. It may not be such good headlines but getting it right would be good journalism
Well thanks for the tip off. Make note: Best not use TNT in future for sensitive deliveries. P.S. What is "industry-standard encryption?" Would that be ZIP files or AES encryption algorithm with a 256-bit key? ;-) Is there a web site that lists all these 'industry standards' we're suppose to use? I wonder if the International Telecommunication Union knows about this? :-)
You know it strikes me that any reputable news site would at least attempt to get their story right. Scottish Ambulance service followed approved procedures and ensured the data was encrypted and unreadable by anyone other than authorised individuals. Hmmm, now only if the child benefit department had thought of that! Whether we like it or not, we do not have the broadband infrastructure to efficiently send very large files over the Internet so organisations like the Ambulance service have to courier discs from site to site. By encrypting the disc, they made sure that in the event that a normally reliable and secure courier company has a moment of incompetence, that the disc will be useless to anyone who finds it. Well done the Scottish Ambulance Service for I have no fears of the details of my emergency call I made to you earlier this year being used for identity fraud. Read on Mr Brown
as far as I am aware it was the carrier tnt who lost the parcel .....not Scotland
While the courier service TNT may be to blame for losing the data, this data was lost to Scotland as well. So yes, Scotland lost it, it's just TNT's fault. Way to go TNT! Personally, if I were to represent Scotland I would definitely put all data transfer/protection so called "procedures" under the microscope. If the data belongs to me & I give it to someone that lost it, I am partly to blame for making such a poor choice.
Probably Gaelic!