Chilliwack – A PR nightmare for the City of Chilliwack, and it hit social media hard…and still resonates.
On Christmas Eve, a number of property owners were informed that an information breach happened December 19.
Names and addresses of a number of property owners were stolen from a city employee’s vehicle.
A memo that went out from the city did not specify if this was digital or hard copy. According to the memo, specific privacy authorities including RCMP were notified.
Nevertheless, many people were angry and took to the usual social media Facebook complaint sites such as Beware!
FVN was notified about one comment in particular: Anyone else get a letter from the City on how some of your information was stolen when an employees car was broken into? In this day and age of easily accessible encryption, no taxpayer information should leave secure servers without being encrypted. In the interest of transparency the location and time of said break-in should be stated? If some public employee left a computer in their car overnight then they have no concept of the requirements for the security of taxpayers information they and should have no access to that information. Does not matter if the information is “publicly available”, they have a duty to protect any data that they are entrusted with. It is also laughable that they suggest I monitor my accounts. If this was a bank they would be forced to pay for that monitoring.
In his year end address on chillTV News of the Week, Mayor Ken Popove made no mention of this incident.
This is the memo that was sent:
