Australian Federal Police Accidentally Discloses criminal investigations report

Federal police mistakenly publish metadata from criminal investigations, Australian Federal Police Accidentally Discloses Highly Sensitive Details, AFP leaked, AFP security

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August 29, 2014

Australian Federal Police, AFP, Australian Police

Accidentally Australian Federal Police (AFP) had made a nasty mistake as they have exposed some of the confidential information about their investigation to the public for several years because the organization failed to edit the documents before publishing online.

The reports which are provided by the AFP to the Senate, which were later on made published on the Parliamentary sites contains the details about criminal investigations and communication interception operations. All these data were accessible for several years according to the Guardian.

It appears hat the documents leaked online comprised not only the names of investigation targets, but also the offenses under the AFP scope and identification details like addresses and phone numbers.
A spokesman for the AFP said it had self-reported the breach to the Australian Privacy Commissioner and apologised to “relevant stakeholders associated with this matter”. Currently AFP had corrected the issue and all the leaked documents were taken offline.

As Guardian Australia have identified the leaked and they have notified the publisher about the leaked documents before making public the exact location of the documents. By this publisher got the time to remove the leaked documents before other can see. But it is not yet clear that, any other had also accessed or got the confidential documents.

All the countries have the same law, as according to the Privacy Act, organizations holding personal information about individuals are obligated to take all the measures to protect it and avoid unauthorized access to it.

So exposing of such confidential documents can create a bad situation for any on the organisations.