Privacy blunder: DIA official leaves paperwork on public transport
A government official lost a folder on Wellington public transport containing the private details of 16 individuals and groups.
Department of Internal Affairs chief executive Paul James has apologised for the mistake, but Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti is asking for the blunder to be thoroughly investigated.
“When my office was alerted to this breach, I immediately requested DIA reach out to those affected so they were notified and the appropriate support was put in place for them,” Tinetti told the Weekend Herald.
“I also asked for the chief executive to investigate how this occurred, and how to minimise the risk of this ever happening again. I have been assured this was an isolated incident of human error.”
The DIA staff member left the folder full of submissions on March 18 as they got off public transport.
The submissions were on the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill, which aims to fill the holes in New Zealand’s digital protection landscape that were exposed after the March 15 terrorist attack.
James said the papers were not policy papers or Cabinet papers.
“We have apologised unreservedly to the submitters for this mistake. It shouldn’t have happened and we are very sorry. We take the privacy of those we deal with very seriously and are ensuring all our staff are reminded about the proper way to manage information to avoid this happening again.”
He said some of the submissions had already been publicly released.
The folder has not been found. A spokesman for the Privacy Commissioner said affected people can lay a complaint if they wanted to.
National Party internal affairs spokesman Todd Muller said what happened was “completely unacceptable”. “And I expect the minister to make that clear in the strongest possible terms to the chief executive.
“The DIA need to realise that it’s not just a folder with people’s names and addresses. When people hand over this information, they’re handing over a little bit of themselves, and there’s an obligation that it’s going to be protected.
“They’re not meeting their side of that contractual bargain when they’re so careless.”