Thursday, September 14, 2006

Incident: BC Government and service provider lose 33 data tapes with info on hundreds of thousands

A while ago, the BC government caught auctioning off backup dapes containing loads of pesonal information (The Canadian Privacy Law Blog: Incident: British Columbia government actioned off surplus backup tapes with sensitive health information). Now, IT Business has discovered that 33 backup tapes sent missing from a British Columbia government data centre. An investigation turned of three of the tapes, but the rest remain AWOL. Some of the tapes contain very sensitive personal information about welfare recipients and others contain even more sensitive health information.

What's worse is that the tapes were lost in August of last year and the investigation was completed in February, but it took a Freedom of Information Act request for the information to come to light.

See: ITBusiness - B.C. loses track of computer tapes with citizens' data: Information about income assistance, prescriptions and identifying details of hundreds of thousands of people goes missing. Telus comments on its role and its efforts to lock down the data centre

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