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Prosecutors' turn for data scandal

The Crown Prosecution Service has admitted it mislaid a disc with the details of 2,000 criminals for over a year.

By Nicole Kobie, 20 Feb 2008 at 11:29

The Crown Prosecution Service can be added to the long list of government agencies hit by a data management issue, after it admitted it mislaid a disc containing the DNA details of two thousand criminals for over a year.

The CPS said in a statement: "This is not a data security issue as this information was always in a secure building and did not leave the possession of the CPS."

The disc had been sent to the UK body by Dutch policing authorities, who wanted the CPS to check the information against their own records to help track down some of the missing criminals - who have been accused of murder and rape, among lesser crimes, according to reports in the media.

According to the Guardian, the government said that once the CPS eventually ran the requested checks, 15 suspects were found to be in the UK - and 11 had committed crimes such as assault and burglary over the past year.

The CPS said in a statement: "We can confirm that DNA profiles of around 2,000 unknown individuals were sent by a foreign jurisdiction to the CPS to facilitate a check against the national DNA database. These are profiles relating to unsolved crimes in that country."

"As this information necessarily relates to ongoing police investigations it would be inappropriate to provide any more detail at this stage," the statement added.

Alan Bentley, vice president of Lumension Security, said: "If the government does not start to address its best practice procedures for taking control of data flow between internal departments immediately, it will suffer a serious vote of no confidence from its European neighbours when it comes to tackling crime."

The conservative party is calling on the government to explain itself in parliament today. Shadow home secretary David Davis told the BBC: "It is a serial failure that has put the British public at risk."

He called on the Labour government to give an explanation: "I think we should have a statement to explain exactly how this happened... why on earth the previous failures didn't lead to systems being put in place to stop this sort of failure."

In other data breach news today, the Ministry of Justice admitted it has lost some 200 portable devices.