Not only do the Poms lead the world in surveillance, it seems they are pretty much up there in the stupid stakes as well. Now ordinarily people lose things and memory stick are, let’s face it, pretty easy to lose. But technology is around to secure data these days so surely its not to much to expect that a government that spends billions on spying on its own citizens would take the trouble to lock up its data.
If a government sees its role as chief spy then it needs to clean up its act. On the other hand, this highlights the problem of entrusting systems with sensitive information. As many IT security “experts” know, humans and physical security are much bigger problems than the technology. All of this is an excellent reason why any invasion of personal security be it by surveillance or by data aggregation should not proceed until it is demonstrated that the security of the data is guaranteed. Clearly the poms fail the test, one suspects that they are not alone.
