Hundreds of Centrelink staff disciplined over privacy violations

Hoo boy. This deserves to be a big news story: Centrelink staff sacked for privacy breaches.

Massive, and I mean massive, breaches of privacy rules at CentreLink, the Australian government agency which co-ordinates welfare and unemployment benefits:

• 5 cases referred to the police;
  
• 19 staff sacked;
  
• "almost 100" quit after being caught out;
  
• "more than 300" face discipline.
  

If this was one or two isolated individuals I would not be concerned. But it's not. It shows that breaches of privacy are rampant in Centrelink.

Only caught because Centrelink installed spyware to monitor their staff's access to records.

Now for the biggie: if this was caught in Centrelink, what about all the other organisations which store private information? Is this problem unique to Centrelink, or unique to Australia? I don't think so.

So how secure is your private information? Not very, I'm afraid to say.