Sensitive files detailing the extra marital affairs, drug taking and use of prostitutes by very senior officers in the RAF have been stolen, raising fears within the Ministry of Defence that personnel could be vulnerable to blackmail.
Up to 500 people in the service could be affected by the theft. They have been interviewed individually about the possible consequences to them and to their families.
The potentially damaging information was stored on three computer hard drives that went missing from RAF Innsworth, Gloucestershire, last September. The files were not encrypted, so could be opened easily. The RAF disclosed the loss of the hard drives two weeks after they went missing, revealing only that the bank details and home addresses of 50,000 servicemen and women were on the computers.
It kept secret the fact that the “vetting” information about 500 staff had also disappeared. The defence secretary at the time, Des Browne, was not told, nor was Sir Richard Thomas, the then information commissioner. The details were also withheld from parliament.
(read more…..)I know it’s over 25 years since I left the RAF but if I or any of my fellow servicemen had had histories like this we’d have been thrown out immediately.
I’m also horrified that yet another supposedly secure data project has gone missing. How can the government expect anyone to trust them to keep a gigantic central database which will be accessible to thousands of people secure when they can’t even keep military databases safe?
