Bank’s Suit Over E-Mail Data Breach Can’t Be Sealed, Judge Says

When a customer of Rocky Mountain Bank needed information, an employee promptly sent it by e-mail.

Unfortunately, the Gmail address to which the material was delivered apparently belonged to someone else--and an attachment that should not have been sent contained confidential information about more than 1,300 individual and business accounts, according to Information Week.

The bank is now seeking a court order requiring Google to reveal the identity of the individual to whose e-mail account the information was sent. However, a federal judge decided Friday that the lawsuit the bank filed in the Northern District of California over the issue cannot be kept confidential:

"An attempt by a bank to shield information about an unauthorized disclosure of confidential customer information until it can determine whether or not that information has been further disclosed and/or misused does not constitute a compelling reason that overrides the public's common law right of access to court filings," ruled U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte.