>>>>You can't imagine how this sort of thing can happen
>>>>
>>>>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=495188&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
>>>
>>>? Things being lost in transit by couriers? I find that all too easy to imagine.
>>>
>>>I guess we'll find out how good the encryption was ...
>>>
>>>BTW Gordon Brown looks like "upper-class twit of the year" in that photo :-)
>>
>>
>>
>>Reports are that if you can read English you've cracked the encryption.
>
>Really? Is there a follow-up article about that? Your original link just says it was "encrypted".
>
>It doesn't take much money or effort to have pretty good encryption these days. If the agency(s) involved couldn't be bothered it seems only fitting that heads should roll.

This report says the data was unencrypted

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/20/ncustoms620.xml

Doesn't sound to good if a junior employee had access to and the ability to make a copy of all this data anyway.