More than 200 public sector staff caught snooping on citizen records
Mark Ballard writes in Computer Weekly:
The number of public sector workers caught snooping on personal records in the government’s largest citizen database continues to grow, with the total now 225 – and the true figure could be higher still.
Yet another employee has been sacked for accessing records on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Customer Information System (CIS), which holds the personal details of almost everyone in the country. With more than 90 million records, it is thought to be the largest public sector database in Europe.
The latest addition to the growing number of staff caught snooping comes from the Northern Ireland Department for Social Development (DSDNI), which said in answer to a Freedom of Information request that it had disciplined 45 people for viewing personal records in the DWP CIS database since January 2007.
Some 225 government staff are now known to have abused their right to access CIS in their job. Workers at numerous local authorities and courts have been disciplined for looking up the personal details of people – usually celebrities or acquaintances – when they had no business justification for doing so.
