Jon Schubert says he was as shocked as anyone when he learned a lawyer working for the Insurance Corp. of British Columbia used the Crown corporation's database to check claims histories of prospective jurors in a lawsuit against the public auto insurer.
The court case was suspended, the contracted lawyer fired and a review undertaken. It has turned up two more cases where different corporation staff gave claims information to lawyers screening jurors.
The incidents raise the question: just what safeguards are there to protect citizens from unauthorized use of large government and quasi-government databases containing people's personal information?
"These are pressing questions, particularly as we move increasingly within government and the private sector for that matter to the use of electronic information systems," says David Loukidelis, B.C.'s privacy commissioner.
Automated summary from: Yahoo! News
