Earlier this month, an apology was issued over the Southwark Council data leak, and the matter was brought to the attention of regulators.
The personal information of around 20 people was accidentally leaked as part of a Freedom of Information request. The request had asked for correspondence between council officials and Delancey, an asset management company.
The personal information had not been redacted, resulting in the leak. The Information Commissioner’s office (ICO) has been informed.
How the Southwark Council data leak happened
The Southwark Council data leak involved information in a FOI request not being redacted. The request was answered on the web site ‘WhatDoTheyKnow’, but the redaction for the some 20 individuals had not been done.
The data leaked has since been taken down, but the information had already been downloaded from the website before it had. Those who had downloaded the data have been asked to delete it.
Apology issued over Southwark Council data leak
An apology has been issued over the Southwark Council data leak.
Jonathan Situ from the Council said:
“This was a very unfortunate error where the personal information, such as contact addresses, of around 20 people was not fully redacted in our EIR response. We immediately withdrew the response when we realised the potential issue but unfortunately it had already been published in the public domain on the WhatDoTheyKnow website.”
He went on to say: “I apologise to those whose details were shared with WhatDoTheyKnow unnecessarily.”
The Southwark Council data leak is one of many breaches and leaks committed by councils and local authority agencies. The public sector still leads the way in many data breach areas, which is why our lawyers are often representing council data leak victims.
Victims of a council data leak can be entitled to make a claim for compensation. The new GDPR that came into force in May has imposed stricter rules and harsher punishments for data leak offenders. Compensation claims are separate to any ICO investigation, although the results of an investigation can help to support a claim.