ST PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said it "regrets" that nearly 2,000 non-public criminal records were posted on its public website.
The majority of the records that were affected in the incident were related to cannabis records that qualified for automatic expungement under the Adult Use Cannabis Act, according to the BCA. Those records were publicly available until they were sealed in May of this year.
A total of 1,957 non-public records were accessible on the BCA's public criminal history website, of which 166 were accessed, according to the release from the BCA.
The law enforcement agency said criminal history records it holds are kept in the Minnesota Criminal History System or CHS. A computer process copies public records from the CHS to the the public criminal history website and in this case, that process didn't function as intended and caused some records to be accessible on the public website in error.
"The BCA made updates to ensure that only public data is accessible on the public criminal history website. In addition, the BCA provided corrected data to all vendors that received the data and ensured that the incorrect data was destroyed. Additional safeguards are also in place to prevent this issue from occurring in the future," said the agency in a statement.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
