Kanagawa government hard disks swiped, sold online www3.nhk.or.jp

Officials of Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo, say hard disk drives with taxpayers' personal information were auctioned online. An employee of an outside contractor is suspected of selling the disks.

Prefectural officials say there were at least nine hard disk drives with a total of 27 terabytes of information. The disks contained administrative documents, including tax notification slips with the names of individuals and firms.