Leaks My Arse

Yesterday Channel 4 News broke the story that on top of the already-known fuck-up over junior doctors' job applications, the new system was appallingly insecure. On Today this morning the government line was "not insecure, leaks".

As today's Snowmail doesn't quite put it, while drawing the obvious line to the threatened ID and NHS information networks: balls.

The junior doctor job application scandal deepens. The government is trying to hide behind the idea that some malicious leaker is responsible for disclosing all the details of those trying to find junior hospital doctoring jobs, and that this is why their personal details were so widely available on the internet.

Our own researches prove that it was the NHS IT systems that were blatantly insecure. Indeed, we have now found other aspects of their IT that are wide open to abuse. Details of a conference attended by consultants and doctors several months ago disclose the addresses, telephone numbers, mobile phones, email addresses, of some of the most prominent doctors in Britain.

It is increasingly obvious that ministers and civil servants have lost control of the security of their own IT systems. The only minister to speak thus far, Lord Hunt, has merely entered his conviction that it's all down to some malicious leaker.

There have been no leaks. There has simply been a wholesale breakdown of security, as Victoria Macdonald will be reporting. But as we shall also be indicating, this raises the whole spectre of the insecurity of ID cards and the IT systems that are supposedly designed to protect personal information.

Strong words, but deserved, I reckon.