“why they can’t spend some money on a centralised database to which their users can gain access from anywhere, like we in the real world do, is beyond me.”
\nPrime your irony glands.
\nHaving spent a number of years around central government IT, I imagine it’s because any IT project which involves accessing sensitive data from the big, scary internet (regardless of VPNs etc) becomes so tied up in security accreditation and arse-covering that it never gets anywhere.
\nSo people work around the bureaucracy by copying data to laptops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The ring of truth there, I suspect.<\/p>\n
On the bright side, these incidents are making even the generally gullible UK public pay a bit more attention to the security issues of a national ID database. (Ironically, the whole data vacuuming-up scheme is supposed to be there to improve national security. ROTFL, LOL, \ud83d\ude00 \ud83d\ude42 – insert irritating net smileys here, at will.) If public concern for civil liberties hasn’t raised much successful opposition, even the Daily mail readers’ sense of self-preservation might work.<\/p>\n
The government’s accursed ID card project seems to be getting deferred ever further into the future and, with luck, let’s hope it will get quietly dropped.<\/p>\n