Government posts addresses of celebrities, police and security services officers online
THE PRIVATE addresses of everyone on the New Year Honours list, including Elton John, Iain Duncan Smith, cricketer Ben Stokes and Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain, were published online in one of the most spectacular government data breaches in history.
New Year Honours: Government publishes addresses of recipients
Cabinet Office civil servants uploaded a spreadsheet with the names and addresses of more than 1,000 recipients, ranging from music stars to defence specialists, on its website on Friday night.
There were fears the list could have been shared with criminals or terrorists as data experts called for the Cabinet Office to be "excoriated" for the blunder.The "error" has been reported to the Information Commissioner.
Staff shared a link to the Honours spreadsheet on Twitter at 10.35pm without addresses being redacted. A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "We apologise to all those affected.We have reported the matter to the ICO and are contacting all those affected."
Mark Littlewood, CEO of Software for Business, which trains company bosses on personal data issues, said the spreadsheet was accessible for up to three hours after he spotted it at about 1.50am.
He called for the minister, Oliver Dowden, to be held to account "like a CEO would".
Mr Littlewood said: "I work in the software industry and it's interesting that a lot of companies get grief for not looking after data in lots of different ways.
"I tried to let them know immediately but obviously there's no one around at that time of day. I think someone should be held accountable."
Matthew Piggwick, who also saw the error, replied to the Cabinet Office Twitter message: "It's probably already on the dark web and/or distributed to every terrorist. Massive policing costs to ensue."
Silkie Carlo, director of privacy campaign group Big BrotherWatch, said: "It's extremely worrying to see that the Government doesn't have a basic grip on data protection, and that people receiving some of the highest honours have been put at risk because of this.
"It's farcical and inexcusable, especially given the new Data Protection Act passed by the Government last year - it clearly can't stick by its rules."