‘Big Brother’s’ little brother: Illegal snooping by town hall staff is up sixfold


Jack Doyle writes in the Daily Mail about increasing abuse of the Department of Work and Pensions’ Customer Information System:

The database holds a record of every single individual issued with a National Insurance number, including those who have died, each containing up to 9,800 pieces of information.

That includes details of their ethnicity, address, and tax status.

In addition, the system records the full income details of anyone receiving any kind of benefit, including 11.5million state pensioners, 2.65 million people on incapacity benefit and four million who claim pension credit or some kind of income support.

Freedom of Information Act requests revealed 124 security breaches by council staff last year, including those found looking at the accounts of friends, family, neighbours, or celebrities.

That is a sharp increase from just 20 in 2008/9. Of those 26 were dismissed and eight resigned during the disciplinary process. But 37 were given a written or verbal warning and 43 received no reprimand at all.