FC: Canadian police solve The Case of the Missing IBM Hard Drive?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 16:30:52 -0500
To: declan () well com
From: Michael Geist <mgeist () pobox com>
Subject: Canadian police recover missing hard drive

Of possible interest -- http://cbc.ca/stories/2003/02/04/diskdrive_030204

MG
--
**********************************************************************
Professor Michael A. Geist
University of Ottawa Law School, Common Law Section
Technology Counsel, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP
57 Louis Pasteur St., P.O. Box 450, Stn. A, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5
Tel: 613-562-5800, x3319     Fax: 613-562-5124
mgeist () pobox com              http://www.lawbytes.ca

---

From: David Akin <dakin () ctv ca>
To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <declan () well com>
Subject: IBM's missing hard disk
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 17:43:22 -0500

Hey Declan ---

Up here in the far north, we've been paying a lot of attention to a hard
disk that went missing from an IBM facility in Regina on January 16. It
contained personal financial and/or health records on more than 1 million
Canadians, including the portfolios and accounts numbers for 750,000
customers of Canada's largest mutual fund company.

This afternoon, police in Regina, Saskatchewan, said they found the disk and
charges are pending. We don't know what they might charge the person with.
If it's theft, the a hard-drive is only worth a few hundred bucks so what
would the penalty be? There are some arcane 'electronic tampering' laws up
here that carry stiffer sentences but the police seem to think the person
who took the disk didn't access the data, therefore, did they tamper?

A class action lawsuit has also been filed on behalf of those Canadians who
had data on the disk.

Anyhow, for Politech folks interested in what's being dubbed Canada's
biggest privacy disaster, here's some links.


Missing hard drive recovered
[Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/5ck6]

Missing computer disk spurs suit
A class-action lawsuit was launched yesterday over a computer hard-disk
drive that went missing from ISM Canada that included confidential data
affecting more than one million people.
[Full story:  http://tinyurl.com/5ck5]

Data processing star faces tough privacy questions
... IBM Canada Ltd. of Markham, Ont., must deal with some embarrassing
questions about its ability to protect sensitive customer information. On
Jan. 16, during a routine upgrade of a computer in ISM's Regina facility, a
computer hard drive went missing and police are investigating . ..
[Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/5cjt]

David Akin
-----------------
CTV News
The Globe and Mail
-----------------
Office: 416.313.2503
Mobile: 416.528.3819
-----------------
Complete Contact Information at
http://www.davidakin.com




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------