Austria: a prison guard steals 8500 records about prisoners (name, address, photo, all the like) for an abstruse reason (helping some U.S. aid agency), a prisoner gets scent of this and tries to contact his lawyer but his mails get first cancelled by the prison administration (their statement: "We were responsible anyway, so we wanted to arrange that affair by ourselves."). Finally after his mail and a USB stick containing the prisoner's data had been tranmitted to the ministry of justice, the minister doesn't feel responsible for this. The prisoner and a helper are now sentenced, but so is the prisoned informer who discovered that scandal: his punishment extends to further 14 months, because the guard and his helper charged him with accompliceship. The 8500 prisoners and their families still don't know that their personal data are stolen and maybe already available for the public.

Just to get it straight: these 8500 people are now prisoners forever. Whoever was able to get access to these data will spread it. These people, their families and their problems are now transparent. Any head hunter, employer, landlord etc. will be interested in browsing through that data, maybe there's something interesting they would love to know. Blackmailers will have great opportunities to find new victims. This scandal is so big and complex - no wonder that authorities try to keep it low. Breathtaking and unbelievable. (Source)