More than 1,000 celebrities, government employees and politicians who have received honours had their home and work addresses posted on a government website, the Guardian can reveal. The accidental disclosure of the tranche of personal details is likely to be considered a significant security breach, particularly as senior police and Ministry of Defence staff were among those whose addresses were made public.
It is thought the document seen by the Guardian, which contains the details of 1,097 people, went online at 10.30pm on Friday and was taken down in the early hours of Saturday. A Cabinet Office spokesperson apologised for the error and said it had reported itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office. “A version of the new year honours 2020 list was published in error which contained recipients’ addresses,” the spokesperson said.
Governments, more so than private corporations and individuals, are entrusted with a lot of mandatory sensitive private information of all citizens. They should in fact set the example for how the laws must be applied. Fining government is not good enough as it is tax payers money – individuals need to be held accountable otherwise behaviour just won’t change. Nothing should have been published without some approval process and the last person to execute would have been a website team, who should have been fully aware about revelations of private information. There’s actually just no excuse for this.
#technology #privacy
#^Government exposes addresses of new year honours recipients
Cabinet Office apologises after details of more than 1,000 people posted online in error