Break-in at government office results in privacy breach

YELLOWKNIFE – The Northwest Territories government says a break-in at its Department of Education, Culture and Employment headquarters in Yellowknife has resulted in a privacy breach affecting about 3,000 people.

The government says the break-in occurred early on Sunday and items including hard drives were stolen.

Those drives contained personal information of people on income assistance between 2006 and 2014 including names, mailing addresses, birth dates and, in some cases, social insurance and health-care numbers.

The territory says it conducted an internal investigation and the theft has been reported to the RCMP and the Northwest Territories Information and Privacy Commissioner.

In June 2021, the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority said client information may have been accessed during a break in at the former H.H. Williams Memorial Hospital.

There have been several other high-profile privacy breaches in the territory in recent years.

In June 2018, the territorial government announced an unencrypted laptop containing the health information of more than 33,000 territory residents was stolen from a locked vehicle in Ottawa. CBC later reported internal documents indicated more than 39,000 residents, plus hundreds of non-residents, were affected.

In December 2018, a resident told CBC he had found thousands of private health records left in a public area at the dump in Fort Simpson, N.W.T. In reviewing the breach, however, then-privacy commissioner Elaine Keenan-Bengts said she could not determine how the 124 file folders turned over to her came into the resident’s possession.

Information and privacy commissioner Andrew Fox has called on the territory to devote more staff and provide more training to ensure private information is protected.

Feature image by iStock.com/Kukurund