Richard Read reports: University of Oregon officials have placed two employees on leave after the “unlawful release” of 22,000 pages of records from the president’s office, including confidential information on faculty, staff and students. Interim UO President Scott Coltrane sent out an email Tuesday night, addressed to colleagues, saying an investigation was underway. Although no Social Security numbers, financial…
Category: Exposure
IE: Shatter loses appeal over data breach
RTÉ reports: Former minister for justice Alan Shatter has lost his appeal against a decision by the Data Protection Commissioner that he breached the Data Protection Act. The commissioner found Mr Shatter breached the act by disclosing information about independent TD Mick Wallace on RTÉ’s Prime Time in 2013. Mr Shatter had suggested Mr Wallace benefitted…
Police commander sacked over ‘sensitive leak’
BBC reports: A London police borough commander has been sacked by a disciplinary panel for giving details of a “sensitive” police investigation to a journalist. Det Ch Supt Andy Rowell was dismissed without notice after a disciplinary panel found allegations of gross misconduct against him had been proven. The panel heard he had let a…
NZ: Queenstowners’ personal details leaked in privacy breach
Celia Grosble reports: Thousands of Queenstowners’ personal details have been exposed in an “embarrassing” major privacy breach by the district council’s regulatory organisation. Lakes Environmental has inadvertently released, via email, the details of every single complaint it’s received over the past 10 years. Read more on Scene,
Glitch on Department of Defense web site exposes retirees’ personal information
Chris Papst reports: A “technical malfunction” is being blamed after some federal retirees had their personal information sent to the wrong people—information like Social Security Numbers and tax statements. Now, some people are terrified their identities could be stolen. […] On Monday morning, the 37-year Department of Defense employee logged into her retirement account, like…
UK: Sensitive personal data exposed in Open Datasets
If at first you don’t succeed, persist. And blog. Jon Baines writes: Imagine, if you will, a public authority which decides to publish as Open Data a spreadsheet of 6000 individual records of adults receiving social services support. Each row tells us an individual service user’s client group (e.g. “dementia” or “learning disability”), age range (18-64, 65-84, 84 and over),…