By Dan Levine
March 21 (Reuters) - A contractor hired by the city of San Diego made confidential police files accessible to people outside the United States, although the company promised to use only U.S. employees for its work with the city, according to a whistleblower lawsuit.
The case, filed in a California state court in November, was unsealed last week, said Matthew Borden, an attorney for the whistleblower. Borden provided a copy of the complaint to Reuters on Wednesday.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the city, and whistleblower Todd Dominguez can claim a portion of any recovery. The city had the option to take over litigating the case after it was filed, but declined to get involved, Borden said.
A representative for the San Diego city attorney's office could not immediately be reached on Wednesday.
Dominguez worked for En Pointe Technologies, which won a contract to provide information technology help-desk services in 2010. Despite promising the city that it would not delegate work to foreign entities, En Pointe subcontracted all the work to Allied Digital Services, a publicly traded company in India, the lawsuit said.
Some San Diego city leaders had made it clear they wanted U.S. workers on the contract, partly for security reasons, the lawsuit said.
En Pointe and Allied could not immediately be reached for comment after business hours on Wednesday.
According to the lawsuit, En Pointe provided Allied with a map of the entire police network, which makes the system vulnerable to disruption. But the lawsuit does not allege any such disruptions ever occurred.
The case in Superior Court for the State of California, County of San Diego is City of San Diego ex rel Todd Dominguez, qui tam plaintiff, vs. En Pointe Technologies Inc., Allied Digital Services, Ltd. and Allied Digital Services LLC, case number 37-2011-100936.