Source: Radio New Zealand
Lydia Oosterhoff is a human rights lawyer and senior associate at Cooper Legal. Jimmy Ellingham
Warning: This story contains references to suicide
- Ministry of Social Development publishes online names of five people making compensation claims for sexual abuse in state care
- Their lawyer says the privacy breach is the worst of its kind
- The documents were taken down late last week but Google AI summaries still included information from them for days
- MSD issues unreserved apology.
The names of five people seeking compensation for sexual abuse in state care were published online in a privacy breach by the Ministry of Social Development.
The ministry has removed the link to documents naming the five, but Google searches of the names were still bringing up the MSD information in the search engine’s AI summary yesterday morning.
The ministry has apologised and says the breach was due to human error.
Breach found by chance
Wellington human rights lawyer Lydia Oosterhoff was searching online last week for an RNZ story when she discovered an Official Information Act request from her firm, Cooper Legal, on the MSD website.
In the published information she was shocked to find that the names of five clients weren’t redacted.
“These are five people who are seeking redress for serious sexual and physical abuse that they were subjected to by the state while in state care,” she said.
“In the scheme of things I cannot think of a more serious privacy breach. This is clearly identifiable that these five people are seeking redress and this is on the internet, accessible by everyone.”
One of the five in particular felt ashamed because of the abuse he suffered.
Oosterhoff worried information linking him to a redress claim was still available on Google’s AI summary when his name was searched yesterday.
“It wouldn’t be hard to figure out that he is taking a claim with MSD about serious sexual and physical abuse.
“So anyone who was to Google that young man [yesterday] morning would be able to figure that out.
“And I can tell you that if he finds that out or if he even Googled himself there is a real, real, real risk that this young man is going to take his own life.”
‘Over my dead body’ – lawyer shocked by MSD proposal
Oosterhoff alerted MSD to the breach on Friday morning.
“Obviously, they were quite distressed,” she said.
“I mean, who wouldn’t be? But they said, ‘Oh, we’ll just reach out to these people and let them know and apologise.’
“I said, ‘Over my dead body you will.’ These are some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable people.”
Cooper Legal and MSD would instead need to come up with a plan to tell the five people about the error in a sensitive manner, especially for the client who had suicidal thoughts, she said.
“If someone from MSD was just to randomly call him up and say, “Oh look, sorry, we published your details on a website to say you’re asking for redress,’ I have a real concern this young man would seriously harm himself.”
MSD has apologised unreservedly.
Its general manager for ministerial and executive services, Anna Graham, said Cooper Legal alerted it to the breach on Friday morning.
“The information was immediately removed from our website,” she said.
“We know the OIA was only viewed three times in the period between publication on 20 August and the time it was removed from our website.
“We have taken a precautionary approach and have notified the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. We have also let the Office of the Ombudsman know.”
Graham said MSD was working closely with Cooper Legal to contact the people affected to apologise directly to them.
“The privacy breach was a human error on our part. We take our responsibility to protect people’s privacy very seriously. We apologise unreservedly for this breach.”
Oosterhoff though said it took hours for the Official Information Act documents to be removed from the website.
She also disputes that they were only viewed three times, saying she knew of more than three people who saw it.
RNZ viewed the information on two separate devices.
Oosterhoff said she’d only had a brief email from the ministry since Friday.
AI presents new challenge
The AI summaries still visible for days after the document were removed from MSD’s website are a complicating factor.
Victoria University programme director of artificial intelligence Dr Andrew Lensen said fixing such an issue would depend on how Google had used the documents.
“One option is that they might have used it to train their model directly, in which case it can be quite challenging to potentially remove that because it might be baked into the model,” he said.
Victoria University of Wellington AI programme director Andrew Lensen. Supplied / Robert Cross
“Probably more likely is that they’re doing what we call retrieval augmented generation, which is when the model makes a summary it can find other documents that are online, so they almost to a live search.
“Then based on that it will incorporate that into its response.”
Lensen said that option was more likely, and that if that were the case the information should disappear from Google searches in days or weeks.
By yesterday afternoon it appeared to have gone.
“This is indicative of a bigger issue, where we have documents that have been ingested by these companies and then summarised and made public,” Lensen said.
“And of course those AI summaries themselves can be unreliable sometimes.”
Oosterhoff still can’t make sense of how the error happened.
“When I saw it I was shocked. I was flabbergasted,” she said.
“How on earth could someone not have stopped and said, ‘Wait, these are five names of people [and] literally the most sensitive information about them.’
“This is information about severe abuse that they were subjected to and that they are asking for a tiny little bit of money to recognise this from the state.
“Did not one person say, ‘Wait, we should not be publishing these people’s names online?’”
She said she would be seeking compensation for the five people.
She also worried about possible effects on future legal action connected to the five people, and said the episode reflected poorly on MSD, especially after findings from the Royal Commission brought to light the poor attitude to abuse survivors from government agencies.
Where to get help:
- Need to Talk? Free call or text 1737 any time to speak to a trained counsellor, for any reason.
- Lifeline: 0800 543 354 or text HELP to 4357.
- Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 / 0508 TAUTOKO. This is a service for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends.
- Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 or text 4202.
- Samaritans: 0800 726 666.
- Youthline: 0800 376 633 or text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz.
- What’s Up: 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 9428 787. This is free counselling for 5 to 19-year-olds.
- Asian Family Services: 0800 862 342 or text 832. Languages spoken: Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, and English.
- Rural Support Trust Helpline: 0800 787 254.
- Healthline: 0800 611 116.
- Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155.
- OUTLine: 0800 688 5463.
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
Sexual Violence
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
