The Times Colonist continues to lead on the serious privacy breach that saw confidential information on 1,400 people discovered in an employees home.
The employee, the newspaper reports today was hired despite recent convictions for theft and passing counterfeit money.
The employee was allowed to stay on the job for five months after the government was told about the risk. The people weren't told for seven months that they were at risk of identity theft.
And Citizens' Services Minister Ben Stewart won't provide any information - including the date he was told of the breach.
The newspaper dealt with some of those issues in an editorial.
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Vaughn Palmer, in today's Vancouver Sun (December 3, 2009), points out a few other ways that Campbell and the BC Liberals a failing on privacy issues. A colossal waste of court time - Information commissioner battles challenges by bureaucracy
Three months before the former Solicitor General lost his driver license to excessive speeding, he made the announcement on behalf of ICBC of how the BC Liberals were going to combat Identity Theft, with the introduction of "Facial recognition technology" (FRT).
Two months later, at a Motor Vehicle branch, in walks Richard Ernest Wainright to renew his driver's license and have his photo taken in the process. Unbeknownst to him the MV employee was busily running this latest photograph through ICBC's FRT to see if there was a match. And there was. The police were brought in to confirm the observation and from that time on, a scandal was in the making that would take seven months to blow up in the faces of the BC Liberals.
Seven months, time enough to lose an SG, to hire a temp SG, to win a new SG in a provincial election.
Problem as I see it, it was the temp SG that should have resign along with the former SG.
The temp SG was Rich Coleman, and it was from that Minister's desk as Housing he should have blown the whistle immediately and had Richard Ernest Perran (nee Wainright) not only fired, but charges laid. But no, Rich Coleman as SG and in talks with himself as Housing minister whispered nothing... there was an election going on within two months and this was a scandal that would surely drive them from office.
1400 records STOLEN and for the past seven months the ICBC staff have been fine tuning their FRT software program to make sure none of those stolen record have applied for a driver's license either here in BC or in 30 states in the USA.
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