Stuart Robinson reports that in the past two years, the West Yorkshire Police have opened 141 investigations into staff snooping and misuse of the police confidential database. The data, obtained under freedom of information requests filed by the paper, revealed that 90 involved police officers while 51 looked into the conduct of police staff. The…
Category: Government Sector
MN: Lawsuit says state license database abused, often for political reasons
Tesla Rodriquez reports: State Rep. Steve Drazkowski is one of 18 plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Thursday that claims employees from Wabasha and Winona counties, the city of Winona and nearly 50 other counties and cities illegally accessed personal information hundreds of times. The lawsuit claims that an unknown number of state employees used the…
Errant e-mail creates security breach at MNsure
Jackie Crosby reports: A MNsure employee accidentally sent an e-mail file to an Apple Valley insurance broker’s office on Thursday that contained Social Security numbers, names, business addresses and other identifying information on more than 2,400 insurance agents. An official at MNsure, the state’s new online health insurance exchange, acknowledged it had mishandled private data. . Read…
Follow-up: Utah Department of Health hack did not result in ID theft
Marjorie Cortez reports that the massive Utah Department of Health hack in 2012 that compromised personal information of 780,000 Utahns has not been linked to any cases of identify theft: Patton said there were 37 incidents in which people raised questions whether the breach was tied to identity theft. That was later winnowed down to four…
@ItsKahuna to be sentenced today (updated)
AP reports that John Anthony Borell III, known online as @ItsKahuna, will be sentenced today for his role in hacking a number of law enforcement-related web sites: John Anthony Borell III pleaded guilty in April to five counts related to the attacks as part of a plea agreement with the federal government. The agreement calls…
Luton Borough Council signs undertaking after data protection failures
An undertaking has been signed by Luton Borough Council following two incidents involving inappropriate handling of sensitive personal data. These incidents occurred after the council failed to implement recommendations made by the ICO for mandatory employee training following earlier incidents. The two more recent incidents involved sensitive personal data that was incorrectly handled by social…