Work at home?
I keep seeing the lame excuse "I needed that data so I could work at home."
And what, pray tell, is the difficulty with doing your job during normal working hours at your normal place of work? *Especially* when the data is so sensitive? One suspects that it's just an ego-stroking exercise: look at me, how important I am, *I* have to use this laptop full of Important Data while I travel." To use a charming old Briticism, bollocks.
Color me "not convinced."
At least some of this carting data by hand around the landscape must be intended only to justify a seat in first class "so they can work in peace and quiet."
An anonymous coward wrote "Doctors and such are often working at sites where they don't have access to the main NHS network."
What sites are these where they don't have network access? And what kind of work is it that requires so much data that it can't be transferred via a good old-fashioned PPP dialup, available anywhere there is a phone line. For that matter, you could do PPP over a cell phone, no? [Excuse me if my technology is out of date, but I'm retired and no longer fret over details. The rest of you can just suffer.]
If the volume of data is too great for dialup to handle, then that doctor (or such) is doing too much work in the wrong place—precisely the same issue all over again.
PS: and what are these "and such" folks who are categorized with doctors?
It smells like a lot of ego-masturbation going on, the laptop full of Important Data being the new status symbol, never mind the potential consequences of forgetfulness, stupidity, or sheer bad luck.