Video recordings of an abuse case and the questioning of a victim were stored unencrypted on a USB stick that has been lost. It was supposed to be sent to an appraiser, who only received an empty envelope. According to the dpa news agency, the responsible district court in Schwerin has handed the case over to the state data protection officer, who is now investigating. For further questions, heise online could not reach anyone in the authority.
Not only such data actually needs to be backed up. A spokeswoman for the state data protection authority also told the dpa: For data carriers with sensitive content, the General Data Protection Regulation stipulates that measures must be taken to ensure confidentiality – for example encryption. Supervisors would have to explicitly explain to their employees how they are allowed to use USB sticks. There are also guidelines for the courts. Whether these were disregarded, should now show the investigations of the authority. So far it is unclear who was responsible for the USB stick and the posting.
The spokeswoman also appeals to private individuals to secure their storage media. “You don’t want these things to appear on the network if the stick is lost.” However, a comparison with holiday pictures is clearly misleading if the lost USB stick is a data carrier with highly sensitive and punishable content.
However, it is not the first time that a USB stick or other storage medium with data that is worth protecting has been lost. In Japan, for example, an IT service provider lost a USB stick containing the personal data of more than 460,000 residents of the city of Amagasaki. Another case is the loss of the data of almost every person who is registered in Austria. An IT service provider who worked for the fee information system (GIS) had put them online unsecured.
(emw)
