It is inexplicable. A Canadian federal government decision places every Canadian at greater risk of identity theft. When there is a data breach, a Canadian citizen simply may not know and may not be warned to take the necessary precautions to protect one’s good name or one’s finances:

“The federal government is proposing to leave it up to companies to decide when to tell customers of a loss of personal information and only in cases in which businesses determine there is a “high risk of significant harm” from the security breach, according to a draft legislative plan obtained by Canwest News Service.”

link: Federal plan leaves it to firms to disclose identity thefts

Does the government think that businesses will disclose a data breach when such information will be a public embarrassment and a public relations fiasco? Furthermore, businesses and other organizations may be forced to pay for financial monitoring. Depending on the scope of the data breach, that financial monitoring, just for a year, could total millions of dollars. A data breach could expose the company to personal and class action litigation which again could prove to be very expensive.

In this plan, the Canadian government proposes no consequences for non disclosure. Trusting a company “to do the right thing” is sheer folly and incredibly naive. Essentially this policy says to all Canadians that, as far as identity theft and security goes, your government is saying ‘good luck - you go this one alone’. Business interests trump the security of every Canadian.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/

Tags: canada, data breach, privacy, security, identity theft, notification, business