Who hasn’t had too many drinks and forgotten something in a bar? House keys, glasses, or even the prototype of one of the most innovative smartphones in the world. No one is exempt from leaving some possession on the road after a spirited celebration, clearly. But what happened in Japan in recent days seems to raise the bar to a new level: officials from the city of Amagasaki have had to apologize publicly, after learning that a worker he got drunk and lost the USB sticks that contained the personal data of all the inhabitants.
The subject in question was an employee of a private contractor in charge of supervising the payment of aid to local residents due to the coronavirus pandemic. The storage devices that went missing not only included the full names and addresses of the 460,000 inhabitants of the place, but also its dates of birth, bank account numbers and tax information.
The incident was reported to the police by the worker himself, a man in his 40s who has not been publicly identified. According to the protagonist of this story, he lost the bag with the USB sticks after getting drunk in a restaurant and fall asleep in the middle of the street.
Now, the big question is what was a private contractor doing with the flash drives that included the personal data of the entire population of Amagasaki. According to the information available, the subject took the information from the municipal administration offices to make a “data transfer”. Once completed, the drunken episode ensued.
Lost personal data in a binge, lots of confusion, and a ‘happy ending’
Aware of the disappearance of the USB memories with the personal data of the inhabitants of the aforementioned city of Japan, local officials came out to apologize. An Amagasaki spokesman apologized for “damage to public confidence”; while the government assured that it would take measures to “guarantee security management” when handling personal data in electronic format.
Within the bad of this situation, the good thing was that, at least, the information was protected and could be recovered. As reported, the USB sticks were encrypted and access to the personal data of the inhabitants was password protected. In addition, once the complaint was made, some 30 policemen were commissioned to recover the lost devices, achieving it within a few hours. As reported The Asahi Shimbunthe bag with the storage units found in an apartment complex a mile from the restaurant.
Regardless of the final retrieval of information, there is still a lot of confusion regarding the episode. as collected Guardian, the employee had to transfer the information to a call center located near Osaka; however, the Japanese media do not reflect it. What local reports do mention is that the Amagasaki government I had not given them permission to private contractors to transfer personal data on USB sticks.
The truth is that, despite the “happy ending” of this story, Japan has added a new headache in technology in a few weeks. Let’s not forget that Asians were left at a crossroads after the definitive retirement of Internet Explorer. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of public administration procedures necessarily depend on the obsolete Microsoft web browser.