Jon Baines writes: If the Information Commissioner (IC) reasonably requires any information for the purpose of determining whether a data controller has complied or is complying with the data protection principles, section 43 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) empowers him to serve a notice on the data controller requiring it to furnish him with specified…
Category: Government Sector
FL: Tax security form mailing error exposes 1,200 taxpayers’ Form 1098 information
Mike Deeson: We are learning more about a tax form mailing mixup that is much more wide spread than we originally thought. The mailing error, which involved Form 1098 mailings, and which affected people as far away as Tennessee, was traced back to an error by a mailing service used by Multi Financial Services: Ryan is…
TX: Lubbock Housing Authority assisting applicants after data leak
Matt Dotray reports that Texas residents who filed a Section 8 application with the Lubbock Housing Authority for rent assistance may have had their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and estimated income exposed on the LHA’s web site when the wrong (unredacted) file was uploaded on December 23, instead of the redacted-SSN one. The file remained online…
HK: Inspector faces cop data theft, child porn raps
The Standard reports: A police inspector has appeared in Eastern Court charged with accessing a computer with dishonest intent, to get the personal details of officers. Sze Hang, 29, is also charged with possession of child pornography. He is accused of posting the personal data of fellow officers online, allegedly to help people identify them…
UK: Theft of laptops containing data about victims of child sexual exploitation ‘covered up’
ITV reports: Rotherham Council covered up the loss of personal data on computers which contained information about the victims of child sexual exploitation (CSE) when 21 laptops were stolen, according to the Casey Report. Louise Casey’s report found that 21 laptops were stolen from the council’s Norfolk House building in October 2011. Today’s report said…
Fire at a Brooklyn Warehouse Puts Private Lives on Display
Vivian Yee reports: No lives were lost in the huge fire that gutted a storage building on the Williamsburg waterfront over the weekend. But the flames put plenty of lives on display as the crumpling warehouse belched up its contents: decades’ worth of charred medical records, court transcripts, lawyers’ letters, sonograms, bank checks and more….