Japanese Man Loses USB With Entire City’s Personal Data After Drinking, Officials Bow In Apology

City Officials Apologise After Japanese Man Loses USB With Residents’ Data

Most of us have gone drinking at night from time to time, which may have resulted in some embarrassing episodes.

But a Japanese man’s night of drinking did much more than make him look silly — it almost caused him to make a grave mistake.

The man had gone for a drinking session at night with his buddies, keeping an important USB stick containing many people’s personal data in his possession. He had fallen asleep on the road and found it missing when he woke up.

Thankfully, authorities managed to find the USB drive the next day. City officials have apologised to the city’s residents in light of the incident.

Japanese man loses USB containing residents’ personal data

According to NHK, Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, had tasked a company with paying subsidies to tax-exempt households deeply affected by the pandemic.

As an employee of the company, the man had been put in charge of the USB drive containing the personal data of over 460,000 residents in the city.

BBC and NHK said this included information such as names, addresses, dates of birth, tax details, bank account numbers, and details of families on welfare benefits.

He transferred the personal information into the drive on Tuesday evening (21 Jun).

The man, said to be in his 40s, then placed the USB in his bag and drank for hours with his colleagues that night in a local restaurant. He passed out and woke up on the street, realising the bag was missing — and along with it, the USB.

He quickly filed a theft report with the police.

City officials formally apologise to residents

Fortunately, the city managed to avoid a potential catastrophe. According to NHK, the man searched for the bag in the surrounding area alongside police officers, and managed to find it on Wednesday (22 Jun) with the USB intact.

BBC reported that the drive was encrypted and password-protected. There were no signs of anyone attempting to access the data as well.

However, the serious misstep has resulted in an apology from city officials and the city mayor, all of whom bowed to residents.

“We deeply regret that we have profoundly harmed the public’s trust in the administration of the city,” an Amagasaki city official said during the press conference.

Close shave with disaster

Alcohol can impair our judgment and cause us to act in an unruly manner.

It is regretful that the man’s night of drinking had almost resulted in a serious leak of the personal information of nearly half a million residents.

Such incidents can also weaken public trust in state institutions, and the consequences would have been unthinkable had the USB fallen into the wrong hands.

Hopefully, the city officials will take steps to ensure such mismanagement of sensitive data does not occur again.

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Featured image adapted from The Japan Times.