Brian Meechan of BBC Wales reports that in 2007, a CD with the personal details of more than 2,300 crime victims was lost in the post by Gwent Police, but none of those affected were ever notified because the police decided that the data could not be accessed. The CD had been password-protected, but the data were not encrypted. Other incidents were also uncovered by Freedom of Information requests to the four Welsh police forces.
More recently, bank account information and personal details of nearly 1,400 people in Wiltshire were lost after a memory stick went missing in the post. Those data were encrypted.
And Leo King of Computerworld reports that a thumb drive belonging to the Lothian and Borders Police containing what is probably unencrypted information on hundreds of police investigations, has gone missing. The drive was lost two months ago but only reported missing on February 26. The police said that the drive did not need to be encrypted because the information was “being transferred within a secure compound within police headquarters”.