Those who have nothing to fear have nothing to hide

I already know my council (Bedford Borough) makes unauthorised disclosures of personal information. I do my very best to make sure they have as little as possible, so that I can live my life in peace. I wont trust them with direct debits or credit card numbers.

The information commissioner needs to get a grip and actually start prosecuting these organisations and barring them from processing personal data for, say, 6 months to start. Better still, put the chief executive and leader of the council in jail for 6 months as well. Force automatic compensation, but make it personal on the officers and councilors.

In my case, he (the information commissioner) just told them to update their files ! What a waste of paper he is.

We need real data protection with real penalties that actually make these people terrified of anything getting out. They wont talk so glibly of their security procedures again !