A day for quiet reflection

Yesterday was European Data Protection Day; this blog held a one day's silence as a gesture of respect to the millions of pieces of personal and sensitive data that have been lost in the last year.

Across the continent people gathered in their hundreds of thousands, coming together in their workplaces, in their communities, in the fields, in the hills and in the streets, to mark this most solemn and momentous day of data.

I need not tell you what an emotional day it was for us all.

Some of us may have brushed aside manly tears as we reflected on the 182 per cent rise in card cloning and phishing in the second quarter of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007; others may have stifled their sobs over the $2.8bn cost of phishing attacks; still more wept -openly and without shame - for the 44 per cent of small businesses that have fallen victims to identity fraud through phishing, internet scams and data theft.

But all were united in their fervent hope that 2009 finally marks the year when the UK's government pulls its bloody finger out and puts a stop to departments' haemorrhaging of our personal and sensitive data.

Fat chance...