‘Shocking’ is the first word that lawyers working with survivors of abuse in State care can come up with after they were alerted to a serious privacy breach perpetrated by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).

Cooper Legal Principal Partner, Sonja Cooper and Principal, Lydia Oosterhoff say they were absolutely flabbergasted to find MSD had published the names of five Cooper Legal clients who were abused in State ‘care’ online.

Lydia Oosterhoff says she was looking for a recent article about the firm’s work when she literally stumbled across an Official Information Act (OIA) response that MSD had published in full online.

“This response was highly sensitive. It contained the full names of five individuals who are seeking redress, or have sought redress, from MSD for serious physical and sexual abuse that they were subjected to in the ‘care’ of the State” says Cooper Legal Principal, Lydia Oosterhoff.

“We were at a complete loss as to how this information could have made it onto a publicly accessible website. This is especially so, when we consider the massive amount of redactions MSD makes when it releases any information to us.

“This must have gone through multiple levels of sign off. All we ask is, did not one person at MSD question whether it was okay to publish the names of abuse survivors online?

“MSD is all too happy to defend its own staff through massive, unnecessary redactions, especially when a child has complained about abuse by an adult, yet it thought it was fine to publish our clients’ names online.

“Ironically, one of the clients who had his name published online is currently taking legal action against MSD, Oranga Tamariki and the Crown Response Office for inappropriately redacting information about him, when his Social Welfare records were released to Cooper Legal. Trust me, the irony of this does not escape us.

“When it comes down to it, this is the Government, yet again, telling survivors that they do not matter, that their privacy does not matter, and that the State’s willingness to protect itself is more important than the lived experiences of human beings who were abused at the hands of the State.

“We informed MSD about the breach at 8.15am on Friday morning. At 12.50pm that day, the site was still accessible. After we informed MSD a second time about this, the site was finally taken down just before 1pm. We were later informed it had been up since August this year.

“After the site was taken down, a quick google search of the clients’ names still showed the link to the OIA, which made it easy to link the named survivors to abuse in State care.

“Artificial intelligence recognised the clients as MSD claimants if you searched their names. From my limited knowledge of AI, this means this highly confidential information about the survivors could be accessible for the rest of their lives. We can’t be sure, which in itself is concerning.

“While the representatives of MSD were sympathetic when we raised these serious privacy breaches with them, we are highly concerned that this was not identified by MSD itself. It also leads us to question if this is a wider issue.

“We consider it important that MSD remembers that the people impacted by this are survivors of abuse at the hands of the State’s employees. Naturally, they are highly suspicious of the State, and this breach only heightens their suspicion.

“This is particularly important when the impacted client group is considered. The people whose privacy MSD has breached are vulnerable and damaged individuals, largely due to the harm caused to them by the State. We genuinely hope that when the survivors impacted by this privacy breach are informed of this, it does not lead to more harm.

“Obviously, the people named should be compensated for this shocking breach. All we ask of MSD is that it realistically considers the harm this breach has caused and compensates those impacted in a meaningful way”, Ms Cooper and Ms Oosterhoff concluded.

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