One lost top secret file is embarrassing. But two in a week?

Tag : Commuter Glove


These documents, prepared for this week's conference in DowningStreet of the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ofwhich Britain currently holds the presidency, detailed the UK'spolicies towards fighting global terrorist funding, drugstrafficking and money laundering.
They outlined how the trade and banking systems can be manipulatedto finance illicit weapons of mass destruction in Iran, andhighlighted the weakness of HM Revenue & Customs' IT systemswhich track financial fraud.
These two incidents have caused major embarrassment to thiscountry, which has been made to seem dangerously unprofessional inthe field of security. Britain has had to apologise to its alliesfor allowing top-secret intelligence to go walkabout; while theconveners of the FATF conference, which will host 450 of theworld's leading anti- crime experts, are furious at being made tolook like idiots.
Serious security breach: officials documents were left lying ontrains going to and from Waterloo station in London
Inquiries are now under way into the first lapse. When the secondwas revealed yesterday politicians expressed mounting alarm, withthe Tories accusing the Government of presiding over a 'culture ofcarelessness'.

There is no doubting that such a culture exists, with quiteinexcusable sloppiness over security repeatedly occurring inWhitehall and beyond.

In 1990, a laptop computer containing plans for the first Gulf Warwas stolen from the boot of a car in West London. In 2000, anotherlaptop was stolen from the home of Armed Forces minister JohnSpellar. In the same year, an MI6 officer left a laptop in a taxiafter a night's drinking in a bar. Another was snatched when an MI5officer put it down while buying a ticket at a Tube station. AnArmy laptop containing data on 500 people was stolen from arecruiting office in Edinburgh in 2005, and a Royal Navy laptop wasstolen in Manchester in 2006.

More recently, the personal details of 25million child benefitclaimants, millions of learner drivers and hundreds of thousands ofpeople who applied to join the Armed Forces have gone missing.

And also last week a computer owned by Rob Beckley, deputy chiefconstable of Avon and Somerset, was taken from his car in centralLondon. Inexplicably, Mr Beckley had insisted on using his owncomputer when he joined the force last year.
This meant that none of the information accessible from the machine- which includes anti-terrorism details, private information aboutindividual officers, and details of criminal investigations,suspects and undercover operations - is encrypted.
One's mouth just drops open at all this. Clearly, the depth ofofficial incompetence in Britain is simply fathomless andinexhaustible. And, maybe, that's all there is to any of it.
Nevertheless, last week's curiously paired mishaps on the Waterlooline pose a number of puzzling questions.

After the first incident, the official concerned (reported to be aMinistry of Defence civil servant on secondment to the CabinetOffice) was suspended and now faces the sack. Apparently, the filesin question are so sensitive they cannot be removed from theMinistry except with express authorisation, and then only in alocked case with additional rules about what to do with the key.

However, there were certain discrepancies between media reports ofthis breach, which were based on official briefings, and thesubsequent statement made to the Commons by the Cabinet Officeminister Ed Miliband.

At first, a spokesman for the Cabinet Office told the media thatthe official was so senior he 'had full authorisation to take thedocuments out of the building'. But then Mr Miliband told MPs that,on the contrary, the official had received no such authorisation.And in a further twist yesterday, it was reported that the policeinquiry was widening to examine whether anyone knew the officialhad taken the paperwork away.
Moreover, press reports said that the loss of these documents hadbeen discovered last Tuesday, when the police were called. But MrMiliband said that although the documents had been left on an'early morning commuter train' on Tuesday, it was not untilWednesday that the official reported the loss and the police werecalled.
So which of these accounts is true? And if Mr Miliband was correct,why did it take the official a whole day to report the loss of suchsensitive material, which one would think he would hardly haveforgotten that he had in his possession?

In any event, what is undeniable is that he had removed top-secretdocuments in flagrant breach of the strict rules governing suchmaterial. Is it not therefore exceedingly strange that, having goneto such lengths to take it, he should have been so careless as toleave it behind on the train?