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Cabinet Office fined £500,000 for publishing New Year’s Honor addresses – including Elton John and senior police | UK News

The Cabinet Office has been fined half a million pounds for misrepresenting the addresses of New Year’s Honor recipients – including Sir Elton John and senior police officers.

At the end of 2019, a file containing the names and complete postal addresses of more than 1,000 people will be honored in 2020 has been uploaded to an official website.

They include the address of Sir Elton John, cricketer Ben Stokes, Tory senior Iain Duncan Smith, TV chefs Nadiya Hussain and Ainsley Harriot, broadcaster Gabby Logan, Grease actress Olivia Newton-John and former Attorney General Alison Saunders.

Screenshots of addresses published online.  Photo: @marklittlewood
Image:
Screenshots of addresses published online that were taken down the same day. Photo: @marklittlewood

The downloadable file appeared on the government website at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, December 27, 2019, and was deleted 2 hours and 21 minutes later.

It was accessed 3,872 times from 2,798 unique IP addresses, most within the first 29 minutes it was published.

The incident was reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the government has apologized and contacted all affected.

Cabinet Office staff then had to work 12 hours a day for two weeks to specifically respond to queries from people whose addresses they had leaked.

Police also have to monitor the internet for the first 10 days, and some forces decide people on the list in their area need extra help to protect them.

Announcing its ruling on Thursday, the ICO said it found the Cabinet Office “failed to put in place appropriate technical and organizational measures to prevent unauthorized disclosure of people’s information”.

“This is a breach of protection law,” it said.

Olivia Newton John attended G & # 39;  Day USA Los Angeles Black Tie Gala January 27, 2018 in Los Angeles California
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Olivia Newton-John is on the list

The ICO was originally intended to fine the Cabinet Office £600,000 but after the department said it had apologized, most of the addresses were easily accessible and it took action to correct the errors, fine has been reduced to £500,000 – must be paid by December 14. .

The money will be transferred to the government’s joint bank account at the Bank of England.

During its investigation, the ICO discovered that the list had been scheduled to be automatically published by the Cabinet Office.

The bug was discovered “accidentally” by a member of the government media team 29 minutes after it was published, so the Cabinet Office republished the page, removing the link to the file.

However, they don’t realize that files uploaded to government websites are automatically cached so the files are still accessible to people with the correct website URLs.

Just over an hour after the file was published, the Cabinet Office contacted the Government Digital Service to ask for help in removing the file because the ICO said the team could edit the page and remove the link, but it did not. Documents can be deleted after they have been published.

The ICO said a developer had to be contacted to permanently delete the file, which eventually happened at 00:51 on December 28, 2019.

All persons whose addresses were published were contacted within 48 hours via email or phone, however, 11 could not be reached through those methods so a printout was sent to them on December 30.

The ICO investigation found the listings were included in three drafts, but in the second draft, an employee “generally not responsible for the process” saw the addresses show up and hid them but didn’t delete them. they.

When the final report was sent to the press office, they were told that “the previous issue was resolved” and that the press office did not open the final file prior to publication because “they relied on commitment guarantee … that the document is the final document. version”.

Lack of staff, money and expertise as well as projects being rolled out too quickly have been cited by some government groups as reasons why the software hasn’t been fully tested before it hits the market.

The Cabinet Office admitted staff in the press office and digital team had not received training in data protection in the two years prior to the breach.

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