back to article Hackney council leaked thousands of locals' data in FoI blunder

Thousands of Hackney residents are fuming after their personal information was leaked by the council online in a bungled Freedom of Information request. Details including addresses, rental accounts and sexuality of 15,000 Hackney Homes tenants and leaseholders were available in full from the website What Do They Know for …

  1. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Mushroom

    11 "views"

    but any one of those could have been a download ....

    ****ing muppets.

  2. da'squid

    Fine them? Why?

    Idiots.

    Anyway, what's the point of imposing financial penalties on a council for something like an info leak? 'Oh, sorry Mr* Council-Tax-Paying-Member-of-Public, we leaked your info, and now YOU have to pay for that mistake financially too.

    Here's an idea - hold the idiot (at a appropriate managerial oversight level) responsible for the leak financially. That should focus some minds.

    *not meant in gender discrimination way, in any way, FFS.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fine them? Why?

      I don't have a problem with punishment at an appropriate level of management.

      Also if it can be shown that people further down the chain were properly trained and screwed up despite that training then punishment at lower levels would I think be appropriate too.

      However if the very top level is not hit with a punishment, and a fine is probably the only effective way of doing this, then all you are doing is the equivalent of arresting the drug pushers whilst leaving the supply chain and overlords in place.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fine them? Why?

        need to hit all of them with fines that hurt them personally, not the council and certainly not paid from taxpayers' funds. The individuals responsible, and those responsible for supervising them - including those elected to run the show. As long as individuals can do what they want with no consequences, this will just keep happening over and over again.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. wobbly1

      Re: Fine them? Why?

      Prosecute and fine the individual responsible and the compliance officer for FoI. More importantly , Have a "Muppet Register" of those who have cocked -up. to ensure any potential employer can keep them away from vulnerable and sensitive data.

      The Hatfield rail crash and it's aftermath showed the laws for corporate culpability are a defence lawyer's best friend. The legislation desperately needs the loop holes and voids redressed with effective legislation sufficient to make the organisations crap themselves all the way up to the board members and shareholders if a commercial entity.

  3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Who exactly is the venerable ancient in that image...

    ... and what does he have to do with the Fol (first-order logic?) blunder?

  4. nsld

    Lessons will be learned.................

    And the taxpayer will foot the bill for the fine in the classic Local Gov to ICO to Central Gov back to local gov circle jerk of money.

    Its time the law was changed to make the individuals who screw up like this responsible so the fine is in fact loss of pension in its entirety and loss of job with the pension pot divided between the victims of these gaffes. Once a couple of senior uncivil servants get the shaft we would see a massive change in the way local authorities take privacy and data protection.

  5. Christoph

    "sexuality "?

    WTF were the council doing recording that information in the first place?

    Would the current councillors and all those standing for election to the council like to now publicly detail all their sexual practices before being allowed to stand?

    1. frank ly

      I think they do that to enable checks on discrimination to be carried out, by themselves and other organisations. I thought that a similar thing was done for ethniciity so that checks could be run to ensure that the tenants represented a realistic mix of the local population, with no discrimination against particular groups of people.

      Having said that, how do they know that the tenants answered the sexuality question truthfully?

      Edit: Perhaps they could test them ..........

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Coat

        and do it on pay-per-view

        Then it would pay for itself.

    2. JohnMurray

      It's probably gained by cross-referencing from other sources. Councils are recipients of large amounts of such information from, for one instance, education sources Any service from a social service department will also have information from your medical records, relevant to that care service.

      The list of "healthcare professionals" with [possible] access to your health records is long, and varied:

      Doctor

      Community Nurse

      Registered Nurse

      Dietician

      Dentist

      Pharmacist

      Chiropodist

      Clinical Psychologist

      Psychiatrist

      Psychotherapist

      Physiotherapist

      Occupational Therapist

      Art Therapist

      Drama Therapist

      Music Therapist

      Health Visitor

      Aromatherapist

      Optician

      Osteopath

      Chiropractor

      Speech & Language Therapist

      Loads of room for mission creep there, although it should be noted that only those involved in your DIRECT care should be able to legally access your records, many administrative staff will also see the information while en-route. In local councils, local taxation officials will have access to your health records.

  6. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "Hackney Homes and the Council takes data protection very seriously"

    This must be a meaning of take seriously of which I was previously unaware.

    Do these muppets really think that simply saying they take it seriously actually mitigates the offence in some way? And do they really think we believe them?

    If, instead of the usual knee-jerk phraseology they actually admitted that they hadn't taken it seriously enough they'd actually get a little respect for their honesty.

    1. JohnMurray

      Obviously an error there, let me correct it:

      "Hackney Homes and the Council takes [the unintended release of your] data very seriously. while this data is routinely passed around council departments, many of who have no genuine reason for needing it, we find it disturbing that people now know that we are a useless pack of data-mining wasters who really do not give a shit about privacy, except our own of course"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Obviously an error there, let me correct it:

        "Hackney Homes and the Council takes [the non fee profitable unintended release of your] data very seriously. while this data is routinely passed around council departments, many of who have no genuine reason for needing it, we find it disturbing that people now know that we are a useless pack of data-mining wasters who really do not give a shit about privacy, except our own of course"

  7. Alex Brett

    I wonder what the complexity of this was, I'm guessing it was something to do with Excel's versions functionality, so the question is whether it was exposed as a previous version that just using the UI could get you to, or if you had to do some digging in the raw file to get at it (e.g. as it was data left in space that Excel had marked as reuseable but not yet done so).

    If the latter then I have some sympathy as you wouldn't expect it to be there, if the former then that's just not understanding the tools, and only one step up from redacting something by setting the background colour to black rather than actually removing it ;)

    1. Jonathan Richards 1
      FAIL

      The real WTF...

      ... is responding to a Freedom of Information request with a spreadsheet. Excel, OpenOffice, Lotus 123, Quattro Pro, whatever. It's just too much of a risk. Print a report, so that there can't be any hidden data lurking in your output. It's FoI 101.

      1. Juan Inamillion

        Re: The real WTF...

        In a previous existence, while in the middle of a relationship break-up that involved joint ownership of a house, my (now) ex's accountants sent me a spreadsheet with THEIR idea of the 'split' of the money and ownership.

        Sadly (for them and her) they sent me a workbook, which had all their notes, comments and calculations on the other pages....

  8. Grease Monkey Silver badge

    Damage Limitation

    What is most annoying about this is that several of the council's comments are clearly about limiting damage to their reputation rather than trying to put things right or actually apologize. In particular they seem to be trying to downplay the whole incident.

    Probably worst in that respect was: "The council has assured affected residents that the document was only viewed 11 times and the data wasn’t in plain sight." But how many of those 11 saved the data and passed it on? Has it been republished anywhere else? And if so how many people have read that.

    But the most annoying statement was the one about people falling victim to sophisticated scams and warning those affected by this data loss to be vigilant of those scams. Why do you need a "sophisticated" scam when you already have just about all the personal details you need to apply for credit. Many social housing tenants already have poor credit histories (often that's why they are in social housing in the first place) just one application for credit which then went unpaid could be enough to detroy their credit rating forever. And even if the council could sort out their tenants credit ratings in that respect, could they sort out the emotional trauma caused by an unwarranted and unexpected visit from bailiffs or a debt collection agency? (BTDT incidentally. Not nice.)

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. earl grey
    Flame

    Prevaricating spokesperson speak

    We're currently waiting for plod to arrive, put us all in cuffs, and take us for a long visit to the graybar motel.

    Well, in my dreams they said that...

  11. Mike Shepherd

    Yeah, right

    "Hackney Homes and the Council takes data protection very seriously..."

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why bother saying it??

    “Hackney Homes and the Council takes data protection very seriously..."

    It's abundantly clear you don't take it seriously at all. Surely the very definition of 'taking it seriously' would be not making an idiotic fuckup like this in the first place, or at the very least not issuing a patronising response? Or is that not in the 'Crisis management for the uncaring flak dodger (internet edition)' handbook?

    “As soon as we were made aware, we ensured the information was removed and wrote to those residents whose details were included."

    And telling them helps how? 'Transparency', the fave modern buzzword of apparatchiks everywhere; as if knowing how much government has made a pigs ear of it is somehow a worthy substitute for being able to do something about it - largely impossible in an electoral system so stacked in favour of 'the usual suspects' that only a seismic demographic shift would give anything close to democracy a fighting chance.

    Come the glorious day, I can promise you a comfy stasis unit in a prime spot on the B-Ark.

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

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