It would probably be more newsworthy if we could report that the British Ministry of Defence has kept some data safe. But in yet another example of butter-fingeredness, a computer hard drive containing the personal details of about 100,000 members of the armed forces has gone missing.

The information was being held by EDS, the Ministry of Defence's main IT contractor, which discovered the loss during a priority audit.The drive contains more than 1.5 million pieces of information, including the details of 600,000 potential recruits.  It contains details of passport numbers, addresses, dates of birth, driving licence details and telephone numbers, as well as a small amout of banking information, reports the BBC.

MoD police are looking for the drive - which is not believed to have been encrypted - but don't yet know whether it was stolen.

The Ministry of Defence appears to have some difficulty in keeping track of its data. It has already owned up to losing 658 laptops in the last four years through theft, and apparently 26 portable memory sticks containing classified information have been either stolen or misplaced since January.

"This is the Ministry of Defence, for heaven's sake," said Conservative MP and former shadow defence minister Patrick Mercer. "They're had more than 30 years' experience of dealing with the IRA, securing very important details from terrorists and others who would wish the nation harm and, time after time after time, individual details of personnel are going missing." X