It is not clear at this stage whether the 911 caller will be pursuing a civil claim for damages as a result of the privacy violation. Instead, you gossiped about it and risked an announcement before things were ready. Other agencies will provide title and dates, and whether you are eligible for rehire. Policy change that is a big deal to staff that works on it, but very in the weeds for the general public (regulation is going to be changed in a way that is technically important but at most a medium-sized deal), Fairly real examples that would be much bigger deals: I missed the phrase ratted me out in the original message, but given those feelings, it doesnt really count as self-reporting. Any info I pull, I have to be able to explain why I pulled it and what I was doing with it. It was a big enough thing that they gave you a 1st chance. It doesnt matter that the information is going public next week. As a communicator, youre likely to be privy to confidential information on a regular basis during the course of your career, and if that information leaks for any reason, it could have serious repercussions for the organization especially if its a government body. I have a friend whose mother did work for an intelligence agency during WW2. I recall a year or so into this administration at least a couple federal departments making A Big Deal out of leaks because it seemed like every other story (usually negative) was quoting an anonymous source sharing sensitive information they werent authorized to release. I empathize I LOVE being a person who is in the know and I can be impulsive. When they call for a reference, many employers will absolutely say if you were fired or laid off, and they will give detailed references. Perhaps over official lines it could be interpreted by the journalist as on the record comments. OP has been mature about admitting fault, lets not undermine that by implying it was no big deal. I gossip too much, including at work. I work in retail, and the company has yearly mandatory training on How to handle confidential info. Goes a long way to being the right way to describe this. Our grant program is going to be fully funded by Congress! Libel or slander or posting comments about individuals that are not related to your work environment are not protected. You can do this, if you keep working hard on yourself. Second coworker only was put on an improvement plan. This was more or less what I was thinking. Whether nor not anyone got fired might depend on context, but somebody would at the very least get a serious talking-to. I once interviewed someone with a great resume but had switched specialties within the field. Agreed. Not so here because what she did was wrong, just not quite as bad as the misunderstood version. Does that matter? Those questioners would hammer her on this. Leaking private information in a huge breach, especially if that leak is to a journalist. what did you want to get out of sharing with her? I empathize, having both been in government service where the people can let the boundaries get too loose and, separately, had a career-breaking moment in a toxic workplace. On the non-security side of things its fascinating to learn what the folks in the booth behind me are working on as Im quietly eating lunch, but its a serious security violation to discuss that kind of thing in public and it makes me cringe so hard when it happens. If we receive confidential information, there are very specific and non-flexible procedures we have to follow to handle those documents/information. The sharing of information is a violation of your professional duties and ethics and would get me 60% of the way to firing someone if I were your boss. Letting stuff out early could mean that goes off with a whimper instead of a bang and might be a financial difference in driving extra purchases for that initial season, and the implication of The Things staying power if it doesnt do well enough during that time. ^^. Im not sure what the best way is to address this, but were trying! This issue recently came up for me as an interviewer. Perhaps the email was intended for a client in which case the clients data is at risk and the sender has inadvertently committed a data leak. While it didnt result in any press, it was obviously a major lapse in judgment and I understand why it resulted in my termination. Why are Suriname, Belize, and Guinea-Bissau classified as "Small Island Developing States"? 2) Told someone you broke a rule. Passing it off as a mistake, or trying to portray ignorance (in the sense of saying "oh, I didn't realize it was wrong when I did it") is just going to make it sound like you don't bother understanding or following policies. Am I missing something? They know it happens. Penalizing or firing such employees may lead to the loss of good talent and even create a negative impact on employee morale. I didnt read it that way, its not a question of the coworker being Untrustworthy, its a matter of the OP not being able to judge who she can trust to keep things quiet. Unfortunately, there are instances where employees have accidentally leaked confidential information. I had the same thoughtthat was very unwise. You kind of glaze over this, OP, but if you spoke in this meeting as you did here then I wonder if thats the real reason for the firing. Only behaviors are right or wrong. But we have embargoes for a reason. Request that they email you to confirm they've done so. Age is hardly an indicator of a persons ability to consistently make the best choices at all times. I wonder if OP ever got the chance to correct the misunderstanding. But given the kind of convo LW describes.while the LW really should not have been surprised they got reported and then fired, and does seem to be downplaying the severity, I wonder if something about the convo led them to believe it was somehow less serious than the mentor clearly understood it to be, and mentor didnt seem to do anything to help the LW understand how big a deal this is, which is kind of a bummer. Actually advertising is not going to be any better. This was a Friday. Im sorry, but I think you were fired with pretty good cause and it would be important to own that or you wont be able to spin the story for future employers. Monitoring should not be excessive and the employee must know what will and won't be caught, for example, whether personal emails will be read. Dont get me wrong, she shouldnt have ever told the friend and Id understand if they were worried if she told more people, but its concerning how they immediately jumped to an even worse conclusion based on nothing but their own assumptions. I mean in the end there is not a lot of reasons to trust either, but demonstrating ongoing cluelessness is not a good way to sell this will never happen again. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. You can get past this, if you learn from the experience. Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been. I was fired from a job and when I started interviewing for following ones, I kept trying to spin it and it did not work at it. The secretary is going to be featured at [cool upcoming event]! Ultimately, its your choice to make. that should be a firing offense. To be fair Jules, I was making the assumption that it had been, in effect, sexual assault, which may not have been the case. If I ever texted a journalist about nonpublic information Id be fired. Contact the unintended recipient It's a good idea to contact the unintended recipient as soon as you realize the error. There are, unfortunately, many things I am doomed to not know even though I would really like to find out. (They could be facing prison time.). If people really need jobs, they need to act like they really need jobs. 2) Multiple people is relevant, but its easy to misunderstand 3rd hand stories. Your tone is very this wasnt a big deal and I shouldnt have been fired for it, when it really should be I made a foolish mistake which I deeply regret and Ive definitely learned my lesson. And then THAT person got so excited that they just had to tell someone Each person thinks theyre only telling one other person, and that they can trust that person. Noooooo. If it comes across like you dont think it was a big deal or that you blame the coworker for alerting your employer, thats not going to go over well. One colleague really didnt like the plan, and he was communicating with people who were organizing opposition to it using his work email. Yeah, Im wondering that too. Assuming this is in the US, and were talking about FOIA laws, typically a records request will come through a particular channel (not likely to be some random employee in communications.). It's difficult to prevent a leak from happening again if you don't know how it occurred in the first place. OP is in a pickle for sure. That may not be the right wordbut Im having trouble finding the right one. She got paid to pose as Roeders* mistress, once. Taking full responsibility isnt just the better moral choice, its the more effective one. JustAnswer is a public forum and questions and responses are not private or confidential or protected by the attorney-client privilege. They thought it was funny and shared it with a couple more. Animaniactoo is right that folks who have to manage confidential information begin to cultivate the skill of sharing without making an unauthorized disclosure. Government tends to operate differently. And Im not saying it was fair or unfair or whether your previous employer made the right call. All mom did was hand dad the phone. A good . Interpretations, justifications, conceptualizations can also be wrong, surely. I dont find it understandable that the OP expected a second chance for this, as someone who routinely deals with unclassified-but-FOUO, Confidential, and Secret information, except insofar as I can have sympathy for someone who perhaps didnt understand the gravity of their actions until consequences came down. A non-disclosure agreement (often referred to as a confidentiality agreement), is a legally-binding contract which governs the sharing of information between people or organizations and sets limits on the use of the information. I think it helps that you told your coworker. They did exactly the right thing to you. Tessian Cloud Email Security intelligently prevents advanced email threats and protects against data loss, to strengthen email security and build smarter security cultures in modern enterprises. Sharing HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL info. This incident was a huge violation of trust. She can come to value the lesson while seeing it all clearly. Then both OP and Coworker could be out of a job. The one time I filled a confidentiality-bound role (as a temp) the information I was given was specifically NOT to tell the person you were obligated to report. You added nuance that I hadnt thought about. Understand the true risk of accidentally hitting send to the wrong person. This makes it seem like they owe LW something, to be loving and release her to her best life. "Compose the email, and only then go back and enter the address (es)," he says. That doesnt mean you need to go into all the details or give a lengthy mea culpa, but you dont want to sound like youre minimizing it. Ive been thinking a lot about apologies in general lately, and one of the most thought-provoking pieces of advice Ive seen is to always err on the side of assuming that whatever you did was a bigger deal than you think. Ramp up your privacy settings across all accounts. She shared it with a friend. A few weeks ago I worked on a medical chart for A Big Rockstar, but not only do I get fired if I tell anyone which one, I get fired if I open up a single page of his chart that I cant explain, if asked, what the exact and specific work-related reason for opening that page was. I doubt she is the only person that has ever done anything like this. And in the future if you really cant hold something in (that is not full on illegal to discuss) and want to share it with your spouse or something, dear God dont ever do it in writing! Wouldnt you ask why the govt didnt fire them the first time? Yup. LW, please, please look hard at what happened and how you can promise yourself first of all that this was the last time. Ive definitely been guilty of sharing exciting but not-yet-announced news with colleagues. It may be unfair to assume a journalist is cutthroat and would kill for a lead, but its also nave to assume they wouldnt let anything slip to the exact wrong person. Of course, its your fault but it is only human to be annoyed with someone, especially someone who seemed to completely misrepresent what happened. Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust. You just seem to still want an answer and I picked up on this as a possible avenue to reflect on in your letter. When we think about misdirected email, we often put ourselves in the shoes of the sender. I used to work at a public Zoo that was owned by the state, and so we were all state government employees. But folks with strong confidentiality duties often dont disclose the confidential parts of the information to their trusted confidants or partners. Like I said, very strange but its worked for me. Disclosing confidential information has, at best, resulted in nothing, and at worse, resulted in injury/death, or even political systems toppling. Yet, the subordinates were not pleased! In other words, dont assume the information only went to the person you sent it to. I always appreciate your combination of kindness and firm clarity. The LW blabbed, why would her friend have more self-control? Does that matter? Its extremely tempting to want to be the person in-the-know, but my motivation for keeping things confidential is stronger: I dont want to ruin my reputation, and I dont want deal with the fallout of severely disappointing my colleagues, whom I respect and like. It may help you to know that the dreaded why are you unemployed right now question doesnt come up in every interview. Sharing HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL info with a JOURNALIST? If you embezzle from the company and tell a coworker who then reports it, the mistake is embezzlement, not telling a coworker about it. Im a publicist. The same goes for ratting out. A person who is aware of a breach is required to report it. You might not immediately get the same job you had before and might have to accept something more junior but be clear in your communications and you'll get there. Almost every situation I know of where someone was fired for cause was presented publically as a position elimination.. You made a mistake. Yup! If someone stole money from their workplace, or illegally harassed a coworker, and their colleague reported it would that person be a rat too? Yikes. Even when it doesnt require them to report it, it still could have consequences they dont want to be a part of! You didnt have a right to privileged information once you demonstrated that you werent trustworthy. My (unclear) point is that there are some options for OP that extend beyond you can never share anything before its public with anyone ever and completely change career tracks.. So to summarize, while an individual in your circumstance can be fired for the accidental dissemination of confidential employment information, their employer cannot press criminal charges against them, both because a private entity lacks the authority to make that decision and more fundamentally because the accidental dissemination of . (Also the NASA leaker didnt get fired. I understand your irritation with your former coworker. It happens. If you hadnt told your co-worker, then they could not have ratted you out. What I find interesting in the original letter is LWs insistence that it was a victimless crime because nothing bad happened as a result of their leak. Of course. It stinks but in this industry, thats a deal-breaker for many. Im going to go see how they reviewed it.). I had not thought about this issue via this lens, but I think youre 100% right. Im confused about the fact-finding meeting. Those who work in circumstances that require them learn how to filter through multiple layers of risk when they get to a point where they come up against that need to share. ugh, no if you cant tell them the actual news, dont tease it. Even though I was only suspended for two weeks, it hurt so, so much. OPs best bet is to stop blaming their coworker or minimizing what happened. Thanks for answering! (I mean, I think its a great program, but Im realistic about things lol.) My only other advice is to consider if there were any conversations on slack that were inappropriate. What the saying about eyes, ears, mouths??? That said, is there any reason you need to answer these questions? If its a marketing message, spam, or something that looks entirely unimportant simply delete and move on. You didn't accidentally email the material to yourself, you did it on purpose. I understand that the breach was very bad and that the organization needed to take some disciplinary action, but it seems to me that firing an employee who fessed up to something like this to a senior coworker sends the message: If you mess up bad enough, dont tell anyone. And, yeah, that happens, its part of being a human. Which is not how I would handle things now, but I was a lot younger and in a bad place in my personal life, so. You can bet Id be gone with no second chance despite my almost-20-years and ton of good work. Heres what to do. So, the implication is actually the opposite of giving your feelings 100% credence its saying, separate how you feel from what you do. All three have kept their mouths shut, at least to the best of my knowledge, and I can talk it over without worrying that I will cause a problem with my disclosing. Yep! How could you have felt defensive about getting disciplined for that? (For example, my BFF works at the Pentagon. A fine of up to $100,000 and five years in jail is possible for violations involving false pretenses, and a fine of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in jail is possible when HIPAA Rules have been violated for malicious reasons or for personal gain. Even if they knew she used Slack to talk to journalists in general, its a massive enough leap from I told a friend via text that Im side-eyeing the coworker and HR a little. This is a GREAT way to position it. Because she knows other journalists who do cover your area and one of them just might need a serious break right when she knows this information. In those cases I have to be even more careful, because minor details might get linked to the news story and suddenly its not anonymous any more. Best of luck, and believe us all when we tell you that if you sound at all dismissive of the seriousness of this, prospective employers will (rightfully) worry that you may have a similar lapse in judgement again. Messages like this can simply be ignored and deleted. But it could be that GSA's dad had a code/password to verify it was actually him and the caller forgot to verify that first. He was very good about keeping track of his boundaries, and we got very used to finding ways of being politely interested in how his work was going for him without putting pressure on him about the details. That makes a certain subset of people *extremely* excited. For context I work with PHI covered under HIPAA for my job. If you had to process the cool news, it may have been better to process with the mentor instead. We just had something similar happen at my office last week. Oh, its possible to be a rat in the workplace. As I said below, that may be why you werent given a second chance. We received a staff email that shared that they were going to release some BIG news about positive new office changes and remodeling and that there was going to be a BIG press conference in 2 days at our office with a lot of high-up political bigwigs and asked everyone to show up for support. The amount that LW trusted that friend is a small fraction of how much the government trusted LW. Basically, I was fired for X mistake. She just needs to learn discretion. Or if the coworker only decided afterwards this couldnt be kept in the dark, call her and tell her this. Im of course devastated, and moving on and figuring out my next steps. And maybe they can, and maybe that chain will end with someone who doesnt forward the info on, or peter out once the information does become public in this case. As a government employee she would have been trained on that rule and should have fully understood the ramifications of breaking it. Im sure he knew about things that he would have liked to talk about, and my dad can talk about anything to anyone at great length. If you told, you breached confidentiality, no matter what the other people did. Sometimes it can be a blessing in disguise. What happened is reputation-ruining for such jobs so re-assessing what is realistic in terms of job expectations after this is important to moving on successfully I dont / cant post it publicly, but I can share all kinds of stuff with people close to me even friends in journalism, though I always specify off the record before i dish and my employer doesnt care because the concerns about confidentiality arent strict NDA / security issues.