The Canadian Privacy Law Blog: Developments in privacy law and writings of a Canadian privacy lawyer, containing information related to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (aka PIPEDA) and other Canadian and international laws.

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The author of this blog, David T.S. Fraser, is a Canadian privacy lawyer who practices with the firm of McInnes Cooper. He is the author of the Physicians' Privacy Manual. He has a national and international practice advising corporations and individuals on matters related to Canadian privacy laws.

For full contact information and a brief bio, please see David's profile.

Please note that I am only able to provide legal advice to clients. I am not able to provide free legal advice. Any unsolicited information sent to David Fraser cannot be considered to be solicitor-client privileged.

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The views expressed herein are solely the author's and should not be attributed to his employer or clients. Any postings on legal issues are provided as a public service, and do not constitute solicitation or provision of legal advice. The author makes no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained herein or linked to. Nothing herein should be used as a substitute for the advice of competent counsel.

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Saturday, June 11, 2005

The Scramble to Protect Personal Information

Tom Zeller, in the New York Times, has a lengthy article on the recent CitiGroup incident involving the loss of backup tapes of 3.9 MILLION Americans. The article notes that Citi was in the process of beefing up their security after a similar incident involving Japanese customers of a related company. The author interviewed Bruce Scheier and discusses encryption of data in transit. See The Scramble to Protect Personal Information - New York Times.

Labels: information breaches

6/11/2005 07:47:00 PM :: (1 comments) :: Backlinks

Comments:

I get a little concerned with the issues around identity theft. As I see it we have three causes of identity theft:

1. too many people keeping far far too much information on us (why the hell did winner's need to keep my credit card number anyway)

2. Failure in due diligence on the part of most financial institutions. Credit is being exented to people with less and less verification of who they are: you are a SIN and a DOB, not a person to them. are barcodes and RFID chips next.

3. The collectors of this information are in conflict of interest with keeping your information private. Equifax continues to maintain the reasons they don't verify authorization for all credit checks is to make it easier for us - we don't have to wait for the home depot card ..and why does rogers need to check my credit for $30/month cable bill which is billed in advance? Most identity theft starts with "stolen" credit reports in case you weren't watching A&E.

At this point all the ID theft hype has given us is draconian laws and enforcement. No one is taking any steps to stop corporations from keeping all kinds of information on us, and half the time we don't even know when they've lost it -

I certainly feel better knowing a commission only collection agent in Scarborough is surfing around on the Equifax site looking at whoever he wants!

This all sounds alot like 1984, and remmeber: "Any soceity that is willing to give up a little liberty for a little security, will deserve neither, and lose both." B Franklin

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