The Daily Mail reports on another major breach of privacy by the government, specifically HMRC.

This time the blunder was low tech but nonetheless serious. Due to wrongly calibrated folding machines, 140,000 tax forms (P810) were sent out with the recipient’s NI number visible through the envelope. NI numbers can, of course, be of great benefit to identity fraudsters.

Unlike the US we don’t use our NI number for absolutely everything, so the consequences may not be too severe. However imagine this happening in some future where government incompetence reveals our universal National Identity Register Number.

Tory treasury spokesman Philip Hammond said: “This is not about isolated errors by junior officials, but a deep-rooted systemic and cultural failure in Government to respect the privacy of citizens.”

He’s right. Governments, whatever their colour, simply can’t be trusted to protect our private information. The only solution is for them to adopt a policy of collecting as little as possible and sharing it as little as possible - exactly the opposite of what they are actually doing.