Monday, October 15, 2012

Ramifications of MSD leakage

Just wondering what the ramifications of the MSD leakage will be in light of other current activity

"ACC sent apology letters in June to sensitive-claims clients and offered to pay them $250 if they agreed to stay silent, after one of New Zealand's biggest privacy breaches in August last year.
The "insulting" offer came after ACC mistakenly released the names and details of 6500 claimants, including 250 sensitive-claims clients who are victims of sexual abuse and violent crimes, to claimant Pullar.Wellington lawyer John Miller, a specialist in taking on ACC, said more than 100 claimants affected by the massive Pullar breach had approached him to take the case. He said those wanting to pursue ACC were sensitive claimants who generally had long simmering feelings of being poorly treated by the ACC system. "

Who knows what MSD information is now at large? Will the Privacy Commissioner advise MSD that clients will have to be notified that their information may no longer be private? How does this stuff work?

And how many aggrieved clients out there would happily accept an apology from the Minister? The relationships between WINZ/CYF and their clients are often far from hunky dory as it stands.

I do not think I am overstating this situation as a nightmare for the government. Do you?

5 comments:

S.Beast said...

I just read Mike Hoskings laughed about it on ZB, not sure how CYFS kids details being accessed is in any way funny. Hope my info is wrong.

But yeah, pretty major. I have a secure file (highest level of security MSD can offer clients) and am really worried. 0800 line said that none of their client details have been breached (....yeah, as far as you know...) Still I would have thought the first thing they could have said in the media would be to assure clients their data was safe.

I read on another site (publicaddress in comments section) that someone else accessed a email from Paula Bennett regarding the changes to welfare. Leaves me to wonder just how big this is?

Then there is this:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/winz-kiosk-security-issues-may-extend-to-other-agencies-expert

OIA request already in:http://fyi.org.nz/request/development_and_testing_of_kiosk

RNZ interview with Kay Brereton http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2535528/msd-told-about-security-problem-a-year-ago-advocate

brian_smaller said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
K said...

About as bad as it can possibly get - the entire WINZ network and possibly all of MSD compromised.

http://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/onpoint-msds-leaky-servers/?p=272452#post272452

Rob Davies said...

Will be interesting to see if you're right, Brian. While there's every chance the kiosks may have been set up in-house, there's also every chance the job was contracted out. Only time will tell, unless you have information to the contrary?

Johnny said...

Do I think it will be a nightmare for the Government? Sure do. But it shouldn't be.

Yet another storm in a teacup. But 4½ million drama queens will be turning molehills into mountains and bringing governments down over it.

And what will have been achieved? Nothing.

New Zealanders will say to a person, "Well this is public services for you. I know how to solve it. These things we love to hate called public services, let's have more of them."

We'll bring the government down over trivia. And not one public servant will lose their job. Not one. And the execs will still get their annual bonuses.

Que? Idiots.

Johnny