The California Highway Patrol has partnered with Flock Safety to install about 480 high-tech cameras in Oakland and on state freeways in the East Bay to combat crime and roadway violence.
The filing describes how staffers “suffered and will continue to suffer ongoing, imminent and impending threat of identity theft crimes, fraud and abuse, resulting in monetary loss and economic harm.”
“We remain committed to ensuring the safety and security of our systems, and we are already emerging from this stronger and more resilient than before,” says CIO Tony Batalla.
The legal filing, which asks for monetary damages of up to $25,000 per affected employee, argues that the city failed to implement “reasonable, industry-standard security protocols for its information systems” and that as a result, employees’ personal information was released.
As part of the attack, 10 gigabytes of data in compressed files — a mother lode of IDs, employee forms, passports, home addresses and other sensitive information — were released last month to the dark web, an Internet network where criminal activity is rampant.
The files are believed to have been taken by an unauthorized third party, as part of the ransomware attack Oakland officials have grappled with for nearly a month.
Interim City Administrator G. Harold Duffey proclaimed a state of local emergency late Tuesday after the attack, which targeted the city’s government networks, infrastructure and communications systems.
