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Volu me 105 Issue 65
Alumni file class action lawsuit against UH JANE CALLAHAN Associate News Editor
The University of Hawai‘i is facing a class action lawsuit after fi ve Internet security breaches, the most recent of which occurred last October, bringing the total number of students and alumni at risk for identity theft to 260,243. Gross v. University of Hawai‘i is based upon four of the five breaches and represents 100,000 victims. Social Security numbers, addresses, transcripts and credit card numbers were exposed for up to a year. Thomas Grande, a UH law school alumnus, is acting as counsel, along with Bruce Sherman. Alumni invo volved in the case involved are seekg an n ing injunc t on ti tion which
would require the university to make changes to their computer systems. That includes “forbidding UH from violating the constitutional rights of its students, faculty and guests, as protected by the right to privacy of the United States and Hawai‘i Constitutions by the unauthorized released of private information … and mandating that the University of Hawai‘i take appropriate measures to ensure the protection of private information,” according to the suit’s website. Class action lawsuits are initiated when individual damages would be too small to pres sure a company or institution to make changes. As a collective, a class action suit may have a m act. considerable imp impact. “It’s a vehic e for social cl cle ch hange. You change. can’t comg pel a big company to change
things if you’re making a small claims negligence charge,” said Grande. “With a class action suit, you can force better standards.” The counsel is stating that UH failed to comply with accepted standards of data protection, follow the school’s own guidelines on data use and improve the system once it was proven to be fl awed. “This is an issue of deferred maintenance. They hadn’t updated the system for three or four years,” said Sherman. “They should have been doing this in increments. What you don’t do in come back.” the past comes Grande said that his class representative (1985) was among those ide who had had his identity stolen. “When he went to apply for a job at the Departmen Department of Health, Sec they ran his Social Security numbe e r for a background check,” che ber said Sh Sherman. “They came back to ther were him asking if he knew there fi ve other people using his S Social Security number. He also had He credit cards used in Georgia. He’s not been to Georgia, ever.” not In addition to an injunction, alumni involved are claiming monetary damages to compensate class members for expenses incurred, such as credit report monitorp ograms pr ing programs
and identity theft insurance. Even those who had their personal information exposed, but did not experience identity theft, are not free and clear of risk in the future. Some thieves will hold on to the personal information they’ve acquired for years, and use it long after awareness has died down. Roughly one in five data breach victims experiences identity theft. If the result of the UH breach keeps with such projections, 8,000 alumni can expect to experience identity theft in the future. One of the challenges of the case, according to Sherman, is that “the courts are literally 10 years behind in technology.” Laws have not caught up to the modern age, as “virtually everything is in an electronic format these days,” Sherman added. Courts do not award damages for potential injury, only for injury incurred. In addition, the courts do not award damages for violations of the Constitution by a state official. Furthermore, it is difficult to prove that those who ex experienced identity fraud did so as a result of the UH breach. S Social Security numb numbers are linked to
everything from bank accounts to passports. Thieves can access bank accounts and even open entirely new accounts in the victim’s name. “Social Security numbers are the holy grail [of identity theft],” Grande said. Those who have had their Social Security and credit card information posted on the Internet will forever need to guard their identity. That means consistently monitoring their credit and paying for losses, as well as paying for credit insurance and fraud restoration. While data has been compromised over the internet at other universities, Grande and Sherman pointed out that how they dealt with those breaches determined the response. Last October, Ohio State University experienced a secud rity breach that compromised 760,000 students and alumni.. d The school immediately notified d those affected, and promised se free credit protection for those involved. UH did send letters to See Security breach, next page
NIK SEU / KA LEO O HAWAI‘I
Data breach: Attorneys Thomas Grande and Bruce Sherman, representing the victims of five UH online security breaches, explain their case to the Ka Leo staff.