Lost Personal Details of Japanese City Residents Recovered

A USB drive in a file photo on March 11, 2022. (Peter Forest/Getty Images for MoveOn & Emmett Till Legacy Foundation)

Storage devices believed to have been lost in the Japanese city of Amagasaki have been found, according to local authorities, hours after the incident triggered worries about the safety of private data of 460,000 citizens stored on the devices.

The USB storage devices were in the possession of an employee working for a company that was subcontracted by the Kansai regional branch of BIPROGY Inc. The company was subcontracted to pay COVID-19 pandemic relief subsidies on behalf of the Amagasaki city government to households exempt from residence tax.

The devices contained personal information of around 460,000 citizens from the city, including names, birth dates, postal addresses, bank account details of households receiving livelihood protection benefits or child benefits, and how much they paid in residence tax.

The Loss

On June 21, the employee took the devices from the municipality’s administration information center to transfer the data. Once the data transfer was completed, he went to a restaurant and drank alcohol for about three hours.

On the way back home, he fell asleep. When he woke up, the employee realized that the bag containing the USBs was missing, and the next day, he reported the loss to the police.

At a press conference, an Amagasaki official said that they “deeply regret” having “profoundly harmed” people’s trust in the city administration, according to Sky News. The data in the devices were encrypted and protected with a password, city authorities said, while adding that there was no evidence of data being leaked.

“We will thoroughly ensure security management when handling electronic data … We will work to regain our residents’ trust by heightening awareness of the importance of protecting personal information,” city officials said in a statement, according to the media outlet.

On June 24, the employee and around 30 police officers searched the route he might have taken after leaving the restaurant, looking for the missing bag. By noon, they found the bag in an apartment compound located roughly a kilometer from the restaurant. The city government said that they will investigate if any information on the devices was leaked.

Mistaken Transfer

A similar mishap with COVID-19 relief funds took place in Japan last month when 46.3 million yen ($343,000) that was earmarked for 463 households in the town of Abu was sent to the bank account of a single individual.

The funds were mistakenly transferred to the account of Sho Taguchi who then transferred the money to three domestic online payment services. He then claimed to have spent all the money on overseas casino websites.

Authorities later recovered the money by seizing bank accounts of the three online payment services under the National Tax Collection Law.