Columbia. Columbian officials reported the theft of information on 31 million citizens of the country. They blame the police for the incident.
The story of the disappearance of two hard drives containing detailed information about the country’s populace from the national registry began with elections in the famous Cauca resort region. Violations were documented during the elections and the authorities involved the police department on fighting cybercrime to investigate them.
Police officers received permission to copy necessary information about Cauca’s electorate from the national registry. However, the police did not stop with making copies. They removed two hard drives containing information on 31 million citizens of the country without the appropriate order.
According to officials, the national registry contains all kinds of information on Columbia’s electorate, including fingerprints, information on past army service and other personal information.
The fate of the hard drives and the police offers who stole them remains uncertain for now.
Comment by Senior Analyst at InfoWatch Nikolai Fedotov: «The penal and investigative procedures laid out in the laws are suited for the previous century, when paper documents were used. To account for the modern reality which enables people to fit millions of records into a tiny carrier or delete them with one click, many laws have to be thoroughly revisited. The process has already begun. There are separate propositions to review and remove electronic carriers. But the overall lawmaking paradigm still hasn’t adjusted to the high storage capacity and colossal speed of modern technology.
This incident illustrates how easy it is to sabotage the work of an entire administration by making a simple error or by carrying out instructions too literally. And just think: What kind of harm could someone wreak if that was their intent?»
