The Home Officememory stick lost by a PA Consultingcontractor a
year ago contained 250,000 more names than originally
disclosed.
The
Home Office resource accounts state that the memory stick
contained the personal details of 377,000 individuals from the
Police National Computer (PNC) and prison records. The Home Office
earlier said the number was 127,000.
The data on the extra 250,000 records comes from the Drug
Interventions Programme and is an estimate of the number of times
the programme was accessed by individuals, according to a
Kable
report.
The actual number of people whose data was lost will not be as
high as the number of records, and only their initials were
recorded, limiting their risk of exposure.
The incident was investigated and reported to the Information
Commissioner's Office.
PA was fired over the loss of the memory stick, which has not
yet been found. The company was
still the top earner among Home Office consultants. It took
home £24.5m, a quarter of what the Home Office spent last year in
total on advisors.