The value of information

I have to admit I've always found it a bit odd when people get shirty about people like the Police keeping information about us. There are many arguments for it and none of them seemed to make much sense to me - until the other day...

To be honest in that I never had a problem with people like the Police having information about me stored on their computers. It all seemed like a good idea to me - especially as I have nothing to hide. If the Police want my DNA on file it can clear me of being involved in crimes and work for my benefit. If all our DNA is stored on file then any crime can be easily solved right?

However my confidence in this argument has been significantly shaken over the recent controversy over CD's of peoples information being lost in the post. If you didn't spot this one in the news, someone from the child benefit agency copied the details of millions of peoples names, addresses and bank details onto a couple of CD's and sent it unrecorded in the mail. The CD's got lost, they were not encrypted and the data could quite possibly end up in the wrong hands. I say possibly of course because no one currently knows where they are. Oops. In fact - very big oops.

It makes me think that even though organisations like the Government and the Police strive to be careful with sensitive information, they make mistakes - and in this case a very serious one. And when they do the information that we've been so happy to give over to them may end up in the wrong hands - which is exactly what we do not want. I trust the Government and the police - I don't think a day is coming when someone evil at the head of either of those organisations is going to start meddling in my personal information for evil purposes. However, I am now slightly disturbed that other people may get in there and do the meddling for them if they can't keep a lid on the information I've been so eager to hand over.

I don't think this realisation is going to be a life-changer for me; I'm always careful with my personal details - but I think it has given me much more understanding as to why we need to be a little bit more careful about information about us and why just saying that because the organisation keeping the information can be trusted it still doesn't mean it is safe to let them have all my information.