Times Union (Albany, NY): Breach of privacy earns time in jail
The Times Union in Albany, New York, reports on another case where an insider is found to be misusing or abusing access powers to violate individual privacy.
A retired clerk at the state Department of Taxation who stole the identities of taxpayers, deceased family members and children to run up more than $200,000 in credit card charges will serve six months in jail.
Rensselaer County Court Judge Andrew Ceresia sentenced Walter B. Healey, 64, of 143 Oakwood Ave., to the jail term, five years probation and restitution on Monday.
Healey paid $20,000 at his sentencing and will pay back $200,000 to credit card companies. He obtained 90 credit cards from 20 banks using the fake ID’s, according to the state attorney general’s office.
Healey pleaded guilty in June to felony counts of identity theft, unlawful possession of personal information, tampering with public records and official misconduct for using work computers and other files to access personal taxpayer information. [...]
A state raid in October 2008 recovered more than 300 birth certificates, 1,000 Social Security cards and 700 tax forms along with hundreds of credit card statements. About 2,000 Post-it notes with Social Security numbers and notations like “good prospect,” “had money,” or “go with this one” also were recovered.
Such cases of access-abuse are numerous. A few include: a UCLA Healthcare System researcher pleaded guilty to violating the federal health privacy law HIPAA – he was “alleged to have accessed the UCLA patient records system 323 times during the three-week period, mostly to check out the files of celebrities, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office”; a former police dispatcher in Illinois misused “a police database for personal reasons — including checking up on the suitor of his girlfriend’s daughter”; and a State Department contractor was sentenced to 12 months of probation and 50 hours of community service for improperly accessing the passport files of 200 people, including Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
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