The UK is learning:

The Scottish Ambulance Service confirmed today that a package containing contact information from its Paisley Emergency Medical Dispatch Centre (EMDC) has been lost by the courier, TNT, while in transit to one of its IT suppliers.

The portable data disk contained a copy of records of 894,629 calls to the ambulance service's Paisley EMDC since February 2006. It was fully encrypted and password protected and includes the addresses of incidents, some phone numbers and some patient names. Given the security measures and the complex structure of the database it would be extremely difficult to gain access to any meaningful information.

News story here.

That's what you want to do. There is no problem if encrypted disks are lost. You can mail them directly to your worst enemy and there's no problem. Well, assuming you've implemented the encryption properly and chosen a good key.

This is much better than what the HM Revenue & Customs office did in November.

I wrote about disk and laptop encryption previously.
Source: Schneier on Security