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St. John's mistakenly posted names of people owing property tax on city website

The City of St. John's accidentally posted online the names and addresses of more than 200 residents and businesses who were behind on their property taxes two years ago.

"I sincerely apologize to any person whose privacy may have been affected by this breach," city manager Kevin Breen said in an emailed statement late Tuesday afternoon.

"Although the information appeared to be fully redacted and personal information was not visible on the city's website, the document had not been properly sanitized — meaning the original layers of text were not removed."

CBC News recently came across the document while searching the city's website.

'I sincerely apologize to any person whose privacy may have been affected by this breach.' - St. John's city manager Kevin Breen

The record in question is a letter to the province's privacy commissioner, in response to a CBC News access-to-information request about tax arrears filed in late 2016.

It lists property owners who owed the city more than $10,000 in overdue tax debts, and is dated Jan. 31, 2017.

The names of the people and businesses are covered by black blocks.

However, the information underneath can be copied and pasted into a word processing document, and the names and addresses are then visible.

In fact, certain types of Google searches for a number of companies on the list resulted in a direct link to the letter posted on the city's website, even though their names weren't visible.

"The city is not aware of any circumstances where the information was used inappropriately," Breen said.

Document online since 2017

CBC News received redacted tax arrears information under access-to-information laws two years ago, for a report that outlined millions in payments then due to the city.

The improperly redacted response was posted on the city's website back in 2017, Breen confirmed.

On Tuesday morning, CBC News contacted city officials to inform them of the issue.

The document was taken offline soon after.

Breen noted that any resident whose personal information was contained in this document will be contacted directly.

He said the city immediately removed all responses to access to information requests from the website until the documents can be reviewed.

'Need to be especially cautious'

In an interview Tuesday afternoon, information and privacy commissioner Donovan Molloy said it's good for governments to publish their responses to information requests.

But, Molloy said, they have to be careful about accidentally including private details. "I think it's positive for any public body to post its responses to access requests online," Molloy said. "It's just you need to be especially cautious, however, to ensure that the material that needs to be redacted is actually redacted, and not simply appears to be redacted."

Rob Antle/CBC
Rob Antle/CBC

Molloy indicated his office could conduct an investigation if it receives a complaint from anyone involved, and could also decide to launch an investigation of its own accord.

"At this point, I'm inclined to wait for some further additional information from the city before making any assessments in that regard," he said.

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