Former Victorian Privacy Commissioner Slams Police Information Breaches
Former Victorian Privacy Commissioner Slams Police Information
August 28th, 2006:Former Victorian privacy commissioner, Paul Chadwick, claims serious breaches in the state police database, following the release of 7,000 confidential records to a prison officer.
In a daming 74-page tabled in state parliament, Chadwick report claims that the Victorian Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) database, in which he states that there have been, "recurring, systematic" breaches of privacy laws.
According the News International sources, a senior police officer authorised to email LEAP data to the prison official. The information contained not only his police file, but 7,000 pages of police files relating to 291 other Victorians. The police had not vetted the email first.
Chadwick states, ""The procedures and technology for auditing the use of LEAP were inadequate in July 2005 when Victoria Police, via its contracted service provider IBM, disclosed electronically to two Justice Department employees a large amount of audit data comprising personal information relating to at least 290 individuals."
The reaction to the holes in procedure could bode well for hardware and software vendors, as the Victorian government announced that it would throw money at a new data storage facility.
Not only has the efficacy of LEAP been brought into question, security of the linked E*Justice database was also called into question by Chadwick, whose report has effectively laid bare procedural issues endemic for many years.
The report follows Chadwick's actions in Outgoing serving the Victorian Police chief commissioner, Christine Nixon, with a "notice to comply" with the state's Information Privacy Act on July 21 this year.