A journalist from The Guardian picked up a British Airways boarding-pass stub, the one you probably throw away as soon as you leave your flight, from a dustbin on the Heathrow Express train.

The little amount of information printed on the stub allowed the journalist and a computer expert to access the passenger’s personal information, including his passport number, date of birth and nationality. He then demonstrated how this would provide the building blocks for stealing his identity, ruining his future travel plans – and even allow to fake his passport.

The experiments also shows the chaotic collection, storage and security of personal information gathered as a result of America’s near-fanatical desire to collect data on travellers flying to the US – and raise serious questions about the sort of problems UK can expect when ID cards are introduced in 2008.

Via nanoblog .