Information was visible over the weekend.
Data was “inadvertently” published online by the Northern Ireland Assembly and was visible over the past weekend.
According to media reports, the personal data was still available to view on Saturday morning, but has since been taken down, with a message saying ‘this consultation is temporarily unavailable’ appearing instead.
On Thursday, North Antrim MLA Mr Gaston told officials that information such as age, name, email address and even in some cases their sexual orientation had been published online. He said he believed it was a serious data protection issue, and would be highlighting it to the ICO, the UK-wide watchdog for data protection.
The information relates to a consultation run as part of the Executive Office (TEO) committee’s inquiry into gaps in equality legislation in Northern Ireland.
At the weekend an ICO spokesperson said: “We do not appear to have received an incident report on this matter at this stage.” The ICO added that if an organisation decides that a breach doesn’t need to be reported they should keep their own record of it, and be able to explain why it wasn’t reported if necessary.
Respondents to the TEO committee consultation were given options about whether they wanted their response published, or kept private. However, there were two options for those who wanted their views to be made public. The second – ‘publish response anonymously’ – offered to remove ‘all personal identifiers including name, organisation and email’.
Written by
Dan Raywood
Senior Editor
SC Media UK
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 16 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Conference, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and ESET Security Days.
Outside work, Dan enjoys supporting Tottenham Hotspur, managing mischievous cats, and sampling craft beers.
