A report by Victoria's privacy watchdog has found the state failed to protect people's personal data during the COVID pandemic -- and led to a case of attempted sexual assault.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 This was during that peak period of the COVID pandemic restrictions and a time when there
00:08 was an enormous amount of contact tracing. So the health department ended up contracting
00:14 out third party call centres to be able to help them manage that huge load that they
00:20 were facing. And Victoria's information commissioner says that he acknowledges the fact that this
00:25 was during a very difficult time for the state emergency departments here. However, he has
00:32 been investigating the misuse of personal information during that time, and says that
00:38 there were people that weren't properly screened before they gained employment. So some of
00:43 those pre-employment checks like police background checks that weren't done properly. In one
00:49 truly horrific case, a call centre worker who actually had a criminal history and was
00:54 out on bail at the time, managed to get the personal information of a young woman who
00:59 was isolating at home alone. And he then impersonated a health inspector to gain entry to her own
01:06 home and actually tried to force her to perform some sexual acts. We have heard from the commissioner
01:13 that this particular person had filled out that police background check application,
01:18 but it wasn't processed by the department at the time. And the Department of Health
01:23 itself says that it deeply regrets the situation, and it acknowledges the profound impact that
01:29 it particularly had on this young victim. But it says that it was right to focus all
01:34 of its attention on trying to contain COVID-19 at the time. The information commissioner
01:40 has made four recommendations to try to improve those practices of pre-screening for employment
01:48 in the future, because he says that it is going to happen again. We will have another
01:53 emergency or health emergency in the future. And he says that this shows just how difficult
01:59 it is to make large-scale adjustments in the middle of one of those. And so that's why
02:03 it's important that all agencies that might be involved in issues like this are fully
02:09 prepared and understand the risks.
02:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]