Earlier this year, 80 people received letters from the police informing them of what had happened. One of them says he was shocked. – I have put this life behind me. Then I suddenly get a letter from the police, saying that sensitive information about me has been found lying in a landfill. With the cases I have been involved in, with personal information and photos. He does not want news to write his name. What has happened has affected him. – I was quite shocked. After that, I haven’t been able to sleep properly or think clearly, because God knows what people know about me, says the man. The police apologize The papers were found as long ago as 2017, but the police did not receive them until January this year. It concerns documents from 2004 and 2005. Who originally found them, or why it took almost three years before the police got them back, the Deputy Chief of Police in Finnmark will not say anything about. – We were contacted by a private person who told us that he was in possession of documents that belonged to the police. As we have been told, they were found at a recycling station in Finnmark, says deputy police chief Trond Eirik Nilsen. The person who reported has explained that the documents should not be distributed to many others. – The few we know of so far, says Nilsen. – Shouldn’t happen The police have reported a non-compliance case to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority. – It is very serious that this type of personal information ends up astray. That should not happen, and we are very sorry that it has happened, says Nilsen. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority has not yet looked into the case. – Now it is up to them how they will react to us, and then we have reported it to the Bureau of Police Affairs. But it is difficult to see now how this could have happened, says Nilsen. Deputy Chief of Police Trond Eirik Nilsen assures that police documents are handled differently today. Photo: Ksenia Novikova / news – Better equipped today The man who is among those mentioned in the documents is worried about whether what has happened will have consequences for him. – I am afraid of identity theft. Photos of me, cases I have been involved in and my social security number have been leaked. And I don’t know if there is still anything left out there, he says. The police assure that a lot has happened in the last 20 years. – Since then, we have had a completely different regime around the handling of documents and information. I think we are better equipped today, says deputy police chief Nilsen. – In this case, we have also made sure that we have good inspections of the archives when we change premises, that we both dispose of documents, and that we do not use paper documents to the same extent as we did before, says Nilsen.
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Police documents with sensitive information found in the rubbish – news Troms and Finnmark
