Miami Beach Issues Apology After Posting Documents With Sensitive Info

The city of Miami Beach has issued an apology after removing documents from its website Tuesday that contained residents’ unredacted personal information, including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and federal tax identifications.

A folder within the city’s portal for archived public documents was removed hours after a Miami Beach resident flagged the problem to city officials.

But it appears the folder, which contained about 10,000 records related to utility billing, may have been publicly available for decades. It was created in 2001 and last modified in 2007, according to metadata on the page.

In a response to the Miami Herald on Wednesday, Miami Beach spokeswoman Melissa Berthier said the city was investigating how the situation occurred.

“Decades-old files on the city’s document management system were immediately removed from public view after the city learned some files contained personal information,” Berthier said. “The city’s Information Technology Department is conducting an investigation. We apologize for this error and are committed to identifying the extent of the exposure and doing our best to assist those affected.”

The resident who flagged the issue to the city had been looking up his home address on Google when he stumbled upon a link to a city utility record from 1993, which contained his Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

The man’s son-in-law sent a tip about the issue to the Herald.

The Herald reviewed dozens of the documents Tuesday, though it was unable to review all of them before the folder was taken offline. The publicly available documents included records — dated as early as 1988 and as late as 2006 — that memorialized various utility-related processes, including new customer applications, water meter replacements and water tap applications. Many of the documents were for transfers of utility services to new addresses.

The documents containing sensitive information were located within a section of the public document portal that held records from the city’s finance department. The portal houses hundreds of archived documents related to city business, including meeting minutes, campaign finance records and memos from the city manager.

Among the property owners whose information was exposed was Saul Gross, a Miami Beach city commissioner from 2001 to 2009. Reached by phone, Gross said he was unaware that a document he signed in 1993 for a South Beach condo building was available online. The document, which has now been removed, featured Gross’ driver’s license and Social Security numbers.

Gross said he wasn’t too disturbed by the revelation, given that “it’s so easy to steal people’s identities if you’re trying to.” Still, he said, “I’m not pleased to hear about it.”

“I’ve been lucky, I guess, that nobody’s ever tried to use it for nefarious purposes,” Gross said. “There is a lot of identity theft out there.”

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