personal information and treats it with care. For example, privacy is not just the responsibility of an agency’s legal department because it also involves information technology, human resources and other areas.”
“Accountability structures need to be clear so top and senior management recognise that they are ultimately responsible for information breaches.”
“Where an information system is broken, shutting it down is a drastic resort but may work in some cases to stop a wider breach.”
- Destroy or securely delete sensitive information prior to re-use or disposal of equipment or media.
- Shred unwanted sensitive paper or photographic records and documents.
- Do not re-use paper records where the information could be exposed.
An amateur photographer broke into an abandoned building that had once been part of Sunnyside Hospital, a mental health institution in Christchurch. She found confidential records about former hospital patients. They included a 1989 duty diary which detailed deaths, suicides, assaults, escapes and patient treatment. The woman also found a number of patient information sheets containing bank account numbers, social security numbers and next of kin.
The photographer held on to the documents for some time and the Christchurch Press reported it in 2002, saying that confidential psychiatric records had been found in one of the abandoned hospital buildings. The newspaper did not reveal the identity of the finder or the exact building where the records came from.
An internal Canterbury DHB inquiry into the breach was initiated and the Privacy Commissioner and the Health and Disability Commissioner were informed.
The DHB demanded that the newspaper return the files. The general manager of mental health services apologised for the breach and reassured patients and their families that no patient files were among the documents returned by the newspaper. He also advised that the former hospital buildings should have been cleared of documents when it was closed in 2000.
Because the identity of the finder had not been disclosed, the DHB was not able to discover the exact building the documents were taken from because a number of buildings on the former Sunnyside (now Hillmorton) hospital site were no longer in use.
The DHB acknowledged the incident highlighted that better safeguards should have been in place for the protection of the health information and it accepted that all patient information should have been removed. But it said the buildings had been secured and the information disclosed was the result of illegal entry and theft.
The DHB then implemented a more thorough process for decommissioning the buildings which included the removal of all documents. It also formalised the process for the decommissioning of future sites.
A woman bought a mobile phone for her teenage daughter, but the phone stopped working shortly afterwards. She returned the phone to the mobile phone retailer and received a replacement. She waited in the store while the retailer supposedly erased her daughter's information from the phone.
Around two months later, the woman's daughter received a text message from a friend. The friend said that a stranger had been sending her text messages asking about the daughter. The woman discovered that the mobile phone retailer had repaired her daughter's original mobile phone and had then on-sold it to the stranger. The phone still contained the daughter's contact list and photographs, and the stranger was using this information to try to find out more about the daughter. The woman was very concerned for her daughter's safety, and the daughter was upset that her details were in the hands of a stranger.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner contacted the retailer, and informed it of the woman's complaint. The retailer unreservedly apologised for the incident. Its policy was to make every attempt to ensure that personal information was deleted when customers had phones swapped as part of the warranty process.
The retailer recovered the phone from the second owner, deleted the daughter's information an