Friday, 26 September 2014

Labour run Wigan Council admits to hacking 3 Councillors e-mails

If you're ever complained to your Councillor by e-mail or telephone regarding a confidential issue or complained about staff, or services, there's a chance that Wigan Council staff may also have been reading your correspondence.

Wigan Council refused to admit that its staff were hacking peoples e-mails.
After failing to provide the information for 7 months an intervention by the ICO has forced Wigan Council to disclose the information;

Wigan Council have finally admitted to hacking 3 Councillors IT, but fail to identify who they have hacked, how often or who authorised it....
The Council admits it keeps no records of dates and number of times the Councillors records are accessed.

Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2014 5:51 PM
Subject: Freedom of Information Requests - ID 5335

I am writing to respond to your freedom of information request   This request has been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
The response to your request is detailed below.
Examination of how the Council maintained network and supported devices are utilised is periodically performed by Internal Audit to assess all staff and members compliance with the Council's Acceptable Use of ICT and IT Security policies. This includes appropriate examination of logs in relation to network security, internet, emails and text messages. Authorisation to perform these functions is contained within the Constitution. Where any suspected irregularities are identified then further detailed investigations are conducted and reported accordingly. Internal Audit activities are reported 6 monthly to the Audit, Governance and Improvement Review Committee and also in the Council's statutory disclosure document.
In addition to these planned reviews, ad hoc investigations are also performed where there is suspected misuse of Council provided IT based services that could lead to disciplinary action against officers and/or Members and/or referral to the Police for prosecution where appropriate.
As outlined in your request I can provide the following information.
Access to specific members records was as follows:
2012/13 - 2 members
2013/14 - 1 additional member
The reason for access to all records was due to investigations.
There is no record maintained of the exact dates and number of times records are accessed as all occasions would have been required for the purpose of the investigations.
If you are unhappy with any aspect of this response, an independent senior officer will review this decision. Please let me know if you would like to arrange this.You can also complain to the Information Commissioner, who is the regulator for Freedom of Information. His website is www.informationcommisioner.gov.uk and his helpline number is 0303 1231113.
His staff may ask you to exhaust our internal complaints procedure if you choose to complain to his office now.
May I take this opportunity to apologise for the delay in responding to your request, this is due to the high volumes currently being received.

Yours Sincerely


Data Protection and Freedom of Information OfficerResources Directorate
Legal & Risk
Wigan Council
Town Hall
Wigan
WN1 1YN

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