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…
Category: Exposure
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…
CA Department of Social Services files with identity info accidentally disposed of without shredding
From the California Health & Human Services Agency Department of Social Services: We are writing to inform you of a security incident involving your personal information. On July 17, 2014, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) was informed of the unauthorized release of documentation that may have included your personal information. Confidential documents were accidentally…
IE: Munster refer email incident to Data Protection Commission
Ruaidhri O’Connor reports: MUNSTER have engaged the Data Protection Commissioner over last week’s incident when a sensitive player review document ended up in the hands of the squad by mistake. Chief executive Garrett Fitzgerald said the province have engaged legal advice as they acknowledged that the communication was received in error by their players last…
Gardai apologise for data breach after email reveals 1,700 email addresses
Eoghan McNeill reports: An email account operated by the Gardaí yesterday inadvertently circulated the personal email addresses of 1,500 people after an administration error. Dublin North Central Gardaí sent a community policing information bulletin to 1,746 people, failing to hide recipients’ addresses to others receiving the newsletter. Email addresses can be considered “personal data” in…
Hacker ‘Rawshark’ disrupts NZ election campaign
Rob O’Neill reports that the hacking of blogger Cameron Slater’s Whale Oil email account, and the exposure of those emails (and other materials apparently not from his email account) in a book and to the media is disrupting national elections in New Zealand: New Zealand cabinet minister Judith Collins resigned yesterday in what appears to…