The case of missing data in the UK...

This been characterized as the biggest security breach ever in the UK.

The UK Guardian reports...

Computer discs holding sensitive personal data on 25 million people and 7.25 million families have gone missing, Chancellor Alistair Darling has admitted to MPs.

He said the details included names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details.

Paul Gray, chairman of her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), which lost the discs containing the Government's entire Child Benefit database, has resigned over the affair.

The staggering scale of the loss means information on senior politicians, police officers and leading industrialists will be included in the missing data, which contains records on nearly half the UK's 60.5 million population. MPs gasped as Mr Darling revealed the scale of the loss in an emergency statement to the Commons.

The Metropolitan Police is now leading the hunt for the two password-protected discs and trying to discover how they went astray in transit from benefit headquarters in Newcastle to the National Audit Office (NAO) in London.

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In a world that is increasingly relying on computer technology, this serves an ominous warning.