any point in shredding/firewalls etc

every goverment department, bank. shop etc seems to be happily loosing laptops. cds and bin bags, full of peoples personal information, then all the utiity companys quite happily send everyones information to which ever country they have outsourced the helpdesk to this month. Why bother protecting your own data, when the people paid to look after the data properly are just giving it away.