Personal data of 3,424 gun safety instructors in California was leaked due to an administrative error of the California Department of Justice last year, announced Fox News.
When a journalist from the Southern California Public Radio (KPCC) made a Freedom of Information request in August, he accidentally received dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and California identification numbers of 3,424 firearms instructors. The leak was discovered two months later, and the data didn’t seem to have been made public online.
The California Department of Justice sent a letter to firearms instructors in California informing them about the data breach and advising them to place a fraud alert on their credit.
“The Department discovered the data breach on October 17, 2016, and notified the requestor of the error and asked that the information be destroyed and that no further dissemination of it occur,” said the letter, sent by the office of then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is now in the US senate.
The reporter, Aaron Mendelson, was asked to destroy all information received, otherwise he would be taken to court.
NRA officials stated it was time California government showed gun owners more respect and accused the Department of Justice of taking too long to inform the victims.
“This privacy breach is just another example of the California Department of Justice’s disregard for the rights of gun owners,” Jennifer Baker, director of public affairs for the NRA, said to FoxNews.com. “There’s no reason why the private information of firearms instructors should have been released – the Department of Justice redacts information all the time. It’s time the California government start awarding gun owners the same respect as it does non-gun owners. “
