16 Jan 2012
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is considering hitting a hospital with its heaviest fine to date following the theft of unencrypted hard drives from the Brighton and Sussex General in September 2010.
According to the Argus newspaper, 232 hard drives were stolen, out of 1,000 that were to be decommissioned.
The hard drives were stolen by a contractor, and some of them subsequently turned up for sale on auction site eBay.
The BBC has reported that the Information Commissioner was considering levying £375,000 on the hospital.
The hospital has said it will challenge the proposed penalty.
This move follows the ICO's commitment earlier this month to focus its data protection work on the health and criminal justice sectors.
The ICO was granted the power to issue fines of up to £500,000 for breaches of the Data Protection Act in April 2010, but the penalties had been relatively minor until recently.
This appears to be changing though; just four weeks ago, it issued a fine to Powys County Council of £130,000 – its biggest fine to date – for failing to protect the personal data of vulnerable young people.
If it weren't so sickening it'd be funny - how many kicks in the teeth for the taxpayer?
Kicking #1: ordinary tax payers have their data compromised by the NHS, a public sector organisation.
Kicking #2: the NHS gets fined by a public sector quango for the data breach. The taxpayer picks up the bill.
Kicking #3: hospital services deteriorate as vital cash is lost to fines. Maybe someone dies because doctors and nurses are being laid off.
Kicking #4: the taxpayer picks up two sets of legal bills as the government effectively sues itself.
You could not make it up - staggeringly, utterly pathetic. The ICO's decision to 'focus on the health and criminal justice sectors' adds up to a decision to back off industry - the one place that might be able to afford to pay the fines.
Posted by: Jamal Housseini 16 Jan 2012
I think the ICO is absolutely right to take the Hospital to task for this. It's totally unacceptable to make this kind of mistake. However, fining the Hospital just doesn't help. They are already stretched and will be forced to cut further corners - and the public end up paying the fine. Sack the Executive responsible, no bonus, no payoff, just dimissal for gross misconduct.
Posted by: Eddie Humphries 16 Jan 2012
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