WOODBURY, Minn. (KMSP) -
The fallout from the firing of a former Department of Natural Resources manager accused of looking at thousands of driver's licenses in his off-time is still building. Several class action suits that seek to hold the ousted worker and the state responsible are underway.
Diane Knutson told FOX 9 News she plans to join the legal fight too, and she wants to know why there wasn't more oversight.
"I started thinking, 'Why us? We're not high profile. We're not any of these people they're talking about. We're just a neighbor," she said.
Knutson received one of the 5,000 letters mailed by the DNR a few weeks ago to inform her that her driver's license data was illegally viewed by an employee. By the time the agency named that employee on Friday by announcing his firing, Knutson said she already knew who the suspect was.
"We figured it out," she said. "Strong suspicion -- the car was gone. We kind of realized the DNR person they were talking about lives down the street."
John Hunt lives near Knutson's Woodbury home. He was an enforcement division manager for the agency, but he was not home when FOX 9 News stopped by.
Yet, although Knutson riddled out who was accused, her questions only began to grow when she learned her daughter-in-law got a letter too -- and so did her daughter-in-law's mother.
"In talking to her, she said, 'I got the same letter," Knutson said.
Now, Knutson wonders whether her family was being targeted by a neighbor they didn't really know.
"Made me mad," Knutson admitted. "Just makes me wonder what more he knows that I'm not aware of yet."
Knutson called one of the attorneys that filed a potential class-action lawsuit in the hopes of joining, and she wonders why no one at the DNR caught Hunt's off-duty visits for nearly four years.
"They need to be aware this information is out there. Nobody's watching them and that needs to stop," Knutson said. "They need to know this can't happen, and we can't feel violated like this."
FOX 9 News asked both the DNR and the Department of Public Safety why Hunt's use of the database wasn't watched more closely. The DNR explained that it had no monitoring system in place since the database was not theirs. DPS told FOX 9 News they check the top 50 users each month, but Hunt wasn't one of them.
Hunt has not yet been charged.
