That Danny!
ThatDanny Exclusive!
I think this must be the start of a series. Government and private companies are producing secret documents, and then placing them on unsecured servers, for Google and the world to see.
On this occasion, aggrieved motorists are unlikely to mind these secret instructions being left open for all to see, but I don’t suppose the council would be happy, and it clearly shouldn’t be.
East Sussex County Council left a document open to the Internet, marked “STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL” and entitled “Criteria for the Consideration of Challenges.” It includes guidance such as how to treat a motorist’s claim that “a pay & display ticket machine was faulty”, or “where the motorist had parked incorrectly in a controlled bay on-street.” Each one of the many different potential reasons, used by motorists to contest a charge, is then given a set of criteria by which to accept or reject the claim. At the time of writing, the document, which is 74 pages long and dated March 2008, is available on the council’s website, without the need for a password. The document’s properties mark it as “Strictly private and confidential”.
I won’t post a link here, although it is clearly available through the council’s site. It would seem that the document was discussed at a meeting in March and posted on the Web alongside the minutes to that meeting.
UPDATE at 17.30: Following my tip-off, the council removed the document from their site – so it obviously should not have been there in the first place. Clearly a SNAFU: confidential information where it shouldn’t be. It’s interesting that a further search found another copy – still live and available on their site.
And of course it goes without saying that our confidence in local government’s ability to protect OUR sensitive personal information needs a further boost, if they can’t even protect their own secrets.
Watch this space for more secret docs. I’ve got the next one lined up. Subscribe to this blog for regular updates.
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