Jack Smith
Jack Smith had his employment and tax records accessed by 5 agencies last week
It was the loss of 25 million unencrypted HMRC child benefit records on 18 October 2007 that made the database state a mainstream issue. In Parliament, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor faced serious questions, while the HMRC's chairman Paul Gray resigned.
The Department for Work and Pensions' Customer Management System (CMS) and Customer Information System (CIS) cover claims for Income Support, Jobseeker's Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.
These are among the largest databases in Europe and the CIS is central to the Government's ID proposals, under which it will replace several existing systems. As such, it is therefore highly vulnerable to attacks from the backdoor and illegal information brokering industry.
Many other significant state databases in this area are raising similar concerns.
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