Unauthorised disclosure of confidential information by former municipal...

Case no. 94/2021
Judgment delivered on 13 January 2022

The Prosecution Service
vs.
T

T worked in a rehabilitation team for a municipal authority and had access to citizens’ cases concerning, among other things, early retirement pension. T brought case files containing confidential information about 89 citizens home and handed them over to a reporter because she wanted to show that the municipality’s handling of rehabilitation cases, in her opinion, was illegal or criticisable. The information disclosed to the journalist concerned their diagnoses as well as their mental health and social situation etc.

The Supreme Court stated, among other things, that disclosing the highly sensitive personal data about 89 citizens amounted to an infringement which was not justified by T’s wish to shed light on the municipality’s handling of rehabilitation cases. The disclosure was thus a punishable offence. Among other things, the Supreme Court gave importance to the fact that the objective of exposing the municipality’s case handling could have been fulfilled by other means than by disclosing very sensitive personally identifiable data to the reporter. In addition, the new Whistleblower Protection Act did not grant her exemption from punishment.

The Supreme Court further stated that it was a punishable offence for T to keep the case files containing personally identifiable data about 89 citizens in her home for a long period of time when these were not to be used for case handling.

The High Court had reached the same conclusion.

The Supreme Court held that there was no basis for reducing the penalty of 10 daily fines of DKK 500 each imposed by the District Court and the High Court.