Personal and criminal justice information has been compromised from computers that were sold and previously owned by Dallas County officials, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office announced on Friday.

The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office has been notified that several thousand surplus computers previously owned by the Dallas County were sold at auction and many contained personal information. Some of the computers were used by the Sheriff’s Department and contained criminal justice information.

The Sheriff’s Department is not the only county department affected by this. Other departments also had computers in the batch that were auctioned. The Sheriff’s Department has also been notified that some computers currently in use at the department lack proper encryption to protect criminal justice information.

“In this age of information blatant violation of the Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) rules and careless compromise of security is unacceptable. We will work with Dallas County Information Technology Department, to hold them accountable and with the Dallas County Privacy Office to mitigate this matter,” said Sheriff Marian Brown.

The Dallas County Information Technology office has advised Sheriff Brown that steps are in progress to correct the encryption issues with the current computers. In addition, the county has notified the Sheriff’s Department that steps have been implemented to mitigate the situation.