It emerged Tuesday afternoon that more people than previously thought had their social security numbers inadvertently released to a local news organization due to an error by a city of Berkeley employee.
City Manager Christine Daniel said Tuesday that the social security numbers of about 11,000 active and former employees were included in its response to a public information request about salaries from the Bay Area News Group last month.
On Friday Daniel said letters were sent to about 2,000 active city employees on April 15 alerting them to the mistake.
The city realized in early April that it had inadvertently included employee social security numbers in its response to an annual Bay Area News Group request regarding public employee salaries. The city took steps to ensure that the data were destroyed and that employees were notified.
Letters to the additional 9,000 retirees will be going out this week, Daniel said Tuesday. The delay for sending retiree letters resulted from the city needing to take “several extra steps” to get the addresses for former employees, she added.
Daniel said last week that the city has changed the way it will handle similar requests in the future to ensure that private employee information will not be released again.
Related:
City apologizes for inadvertent release of employee SSNs [04.22.13]
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