Your recorded interviews are essential to you. As a precaution you make a back-up copy of your interviews onto a USB drive, just in case something happens to you computer. When you get home, the USB drive with the audio files is not in your pocket anymore. It probably fell out of the pocket, onto the floor or the seat on a bus.
As the USB drive was intended as a backup, it is not password protected. Anyone who finds it can listen to the interviews, thus getting access to personal information about your informants.
The next morning you rush to the office of your supervisor to ask for advice. Should you contact all your informants and inform them about the potential data breach?
Your supervisor is reluctant to give explicit advice. She states that on one hand, there is a clear protocol at your institution- whenever there is a potential leak of personal data, the affected parties must be informed.
On the other hand this is no sensitive information on the USB - your informants did not tell you about their personal health, religious beliefs or anything similar
Your concern now is that telling your informants about the situation might make them distressed, angry and confused. They might worry that something confidential now will be out in the open. You promised them confidentiality.
Your supervisor tells you that in her position she has to advise you to follow the protocol and inform your informants. However, she promises to keep her knowledge of the potential breach to herself, and will not follow up on whether you actually followed her advice.
What do you do?
