'Sensitive' MoD laptop stolen at hotel

'Sensitive' MoD laptop stolen at hotel

www.independent.co.uk

A laptop containing sensitive information was stolen as an official checked out of a Liverpool hotel, the Ministry of Defence has admitted. The theft from the Britannia Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool city centre on Thursday was disclosed by ministers in response to a Parliamentary question.

[...]

The 659th laptop to be stolen since 2004 was snatched by a thief when its owner put it down on the Adelphi hotel's floor while he checked out.

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659 laptops. Many containing classified information.

Is it just me, or is this weird? I could understand the occasional loss, but 659!? This sounds more organized than accidental to me.

I hope their encryption routines are good. Given the carelessness in having them stolen in the first place, I somehow doubt it.

www.independent.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is from the MoD homepages concerning an earlier theft:

Defence Secretary Des Browne has today set out a package of stringent measures, reviews and investigations completed or underway to safeguard information held by the Ministry of Defence.

Guess the "stringent measures, reviews and investigations" didn't help that much.

Originally posted by gekko
Is it just me, or is this weird? I could understand the occasional loss, but 659!? This sounds more organized than accidental to me.

So the laptop gets stolen from the hotel lobby floor in the middle of the city centre. The hotel has 402 bedrooms, so it's not small by any stretch of the imagination. Where are the witnesses? Where is the CCTV footage?

they do keep on "missplacing" all our personal details and important goverment files don't they. They can be trusted to look after lots of things,better keep it all in one system,like microchipping everone........

reply to post by Acidtastic
Indeed. Even if this is pure incompetence that's hardly reassuring!

I still find it hard to believe that even the government can be that incompetent...

reply to post by Acidtastic


This seems to be happening every couple of months,surely after the 3rd was stolen something was put in place to stop this happening again,i never understand why they carry a laptop around with such sensitive info on it.
Or was nothing really stolen and there just using scare tactics for some reason

reply to post by rhynouk
659 thefts over four years equals about one laptop stolen every two days...

If that's not suspicious I don't know what is.

This was the Defence Secretary Des Brownes response to the problem earlier this year.

Sounds like pure spin to me.

reply to post by rhynouk


it could well be scare tactics. Make us feel that we can't trust them with our personal information. So that we will readily accept the "new safer" way of them having the same information. IE,ID cards,biochips and dominant control.

They'll have to buy it buy on ebay like they did with the other one.

And this government expects you to trust them. Pathetic.

How many lives have all those missing files disrupted or ruined? No doubt it runs into the hundreds of thousands.

Now, how much was this person paid to 'lode' this data? And who did they lose it too?

Qui Beuno?

Computerworld UK on the encryption issue.

Nick Lowe, northern Europe director at security supplier Check Point, said he doubted that many of the previous 658 laptops were protected by encryption.

“We don’t know if any of these devices or laptops were encrypted, but recent experience suggests that the majority were not. Even as recently as November 2007, only 48 percent of public and private sector companies had any data encryption software in use, according to a survey we conducted.”

In addition several USB keys have been 'lost'. Several containing classified information.