From the Information Commissioner’s Office: The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ordered the Council of the Isle of Scilly to implement new data protection policies and training after two data breaches involving the disclosure of personal data. The first breach occurred in June 2013 when an attachment inadvertently included in an email revealed personal data…
Category: Exposure
Earthquake data privacy breach ‘avoidable’
Charles Anderson reports: A review of the Earthquake Commission’s handling of the privacy breach that revealed the details of all Canterbury claimants found the error could have been avoided. The breach might not have happened if EQC had learned lessons from a similar breach at another government agency, the review said. In early 2013, 83,000…
AL: Mobile County License Commission: claims filed
walakelliejones reports: Fox10 News has discovered an investigation is underway to find out whether or not Mobile County License Commissioner Kim Hastie violated federal law by allegedly giving city residents’ personal information to a political campaign. Two Mobilians, Anitra Diamond and Lebarron Yates, have filed claims against Mobile County officials. In their claims, they state…
WI: Personal information on city website
Holy screw-up, Batman! Shaun Dinck reports: Personal information from hundreds of property owners was available on the City of Beloit’s website, and the city doesn’t know for sure how long it was online. The information available was in the Document Center on the city’s website, and included Social Security numbers, dates of birth and possible…
UK: Crown Office worker guilty of leaking court case details
The Herald Scotland reports: A Crown Office worker has been found guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act and Data Protection Act by leaking information about court cases to people he knew. Iain Sawers, 25, was convicted after a seven-day trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. A jury returned guilty verdicts on charges of attempting to…
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Coursera
Jonathan Mayer writes: I’m excited to be teaching Stanford Law’s first Coursera offering this fall, on government surveillance. In preparation, I’ve been extensively poking around the platform; while I found some snazzy features, I also stumbled across a few security and privacy issues. Any teacher can dump the entire user database, including over nine million names and email addresses. If…