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The Cabinet Office has been fined half a million pounds for mistakenly publishing addresses of New Year Honours recipients – including Sir Elton John and senior police officers.
At the end of 2019, a file containing the names and full postal addresses of more than 1,000 people due to receive an honour in 2020 was uploaded to an official website.
They included the addresses of Sir Elton John, cricketer Ben Stokes, senior Tory Iain Duncan Smith, TV chefs Nadiya Hussain and Ainsley Harriot, broadcaster Gabby Logan, Grease actress Olivia Newton-John and former director of public prosecutions Alison Saunders.
The file, which could be downloaded, appeared on the government’s website at 10.30pm on Friday 27 December 2019 and was removed 2 hours 21 minutes later.
It was accessed 3,872 times from 2,798 unique IP addresses, mostly within the first 29 minutes it had been published.
The incident was reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the government apologised and contacted all those affected.
Cabinet Office staff then had to work 12-hour days for two weeks specifically answering queries from the people whose addresses they had leaked.
The police also had to monitor the internet for the first 10 days and some forces decided people on the list in their areas needed extra help to protect them.
Publishing its ruling on Thursday, the ICO said it found the Cabinet Office “failed to put appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of people’s information”.
“This is a breach of protection law,” it said.
Olivia Newton-John was on the list
The ICO initially planned to fine the Cabinet Office £600,000 but after the department said it had apologised, most of the…
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Source : skynews
