Govt wants answers to WINZ privacy breach

A promise from the Government this morning to find out just how the latest privacy breach at one of its departments occurred.

Following in the wake of the ACC privacy scandal, a blogger has detailed how he walked into two WINZ offices and used the self-service kiosks to access the personal information of a number of people.

Labour says it's staggering.

The Social Development Minister is demanding answers from her department - and so is the Prime Minister.

"We're going to have to get to the bottom of that. I don't know how on earth that has happened. Actually didn't know about it until I read it in the paper this morning, I spoke to the Minister pretty early in the morning. Those self-service kiosks have been in operation for, she said to me, a year or more."

There are fears that Government plans to protect at risk children will be compromised by revelations of the massive privacy breach.

Labour MP Jacinda Adern says the breach undermines the credibility of the department's ability to handle sensitive information.

"The public's faith in the security of MSD's data bases need to be restored. Now of course that's a dire situation given we do need to make progress on behalf of vulnerable children but we also need to protect them and their information."

Party Co-Leader Metiria Turei says MSD failed to address the problem when it was previously raised with them by beneficiary advocate Kay Brereton.

"MSD clearly failed to deal with her concern. They've said that they've rebuilt the system but whatever system they rebuilt it to didn't fix this problem."

Ms Turei fears cut backs in back office staff and Government reforms may have caused the problem.

MORE: Blogger exposes WINZ kiosk privacy breaches

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