The Zurich Ministry of Justice had tried to cover up the scandal. For two years, Justice Director Jacqueline Fehr (59) hid from the public that highly sensitive data had fallen into the hands of third parties due to carelessness in computer destruction. The results of a clandestine administrative investigation were kept confidential. The data leak came to light only last week, thanks to Blick research.
Now Fehr has to explain himself. On Tuesday morning, the government councilor appears in front of the media (Blick TV broadcasts live at 10:00 am). Does it finally clear the board after media printing?
Documents can no longer be found
On Friday, the Justice Department acknowledged that Department of Justice computers were probably not properly disposed of. The “data security incident” took place between 2006 and 2012.
It’s hard to reconstruct exactly what happened then. Justice Department officials directly involved say there is a written agreement with the man tasked with disposing of the computers. It also had to sign that it would properly wipe the hard drives before reselling them. Problem: It cannot be proven. Important documents can no longer be found. They were allegedly destroyed, as evidenced by interrogations. And this time it seems like they’re really gone.
paper must go
The responsible secretary, the head of the “Digital Solutions” department at the time, ordered that “we need to clean up and there should be no more paper in the folders.” A department called “Digital Solutions” cannot keep so much on paper.
As a result, a large number of files were destroyed without being digitized first. The trained stationery salesman said he was told only that packing slips had to be kept for five years. The rest can be shredded or thrown away.
Former IT chief convicted of corruption
The boss, whom the secretary mentions by name, was the head of the IT department of the Justice Department from 2018 to 2020. So the extermination campaign took place only a few years ago – shortly before the data leak was discovered. At that time, Jacqueline Fehr was already head of the Ministry of Justice.
What’s also stark about the entire data scandal is that one of the chief officials allegedly responsible was later found guilty of exploiting it in a different context. At the same time, the sensitive data ended up in the Zurich environment, the cantonal employee was invited to travel by an IT company. Blick is reluctant to comment on the data scandal when asked.
The fact that the Zurich judiciary so carelessly disposed of hard drives with sensitive data on them surprised even the men who got their hands on them. “Sometimes we felt like we were in the wrong movie,” said someone who occasionally helped with the divestiture. Several times he was “surprised” that computers at the Justice Department did not properly dispose of data. “I think they want to save the money,” he suspected in one query.
Meanwhile, the Federal Police Office (Fedpol) has also launched an investigation into the data leak. It becomes clear whether Fedpol data reaches third parties, and if so, how. The office said you were in contact with the Zurich authorities at Blick’s request.