Jennifer Stoddart, Canada's Privacy Commissioner, released her annual report [full report PDF | Press release] today and here is its thesis:
Too many data breaches are occurring because companies have ignored some of the most basic steps to protect personal information
But, as Stoddart herself has often complained, the federal privacy commissioner can do little to change that beyond telling us, year in, year out, that too many data breaches are happening. While it's true she can take serious cases to the Federal Court of Canada, the Privacy Commissioner rarely does that. Her biggest weapon to force compliance with federal privacy laws is the power of censure. Last week in Germany, there were plenty of cries for telecom giant Deutsche Telekom to be publicly censured:
FRANKFURT — Germany was engulfed in a national furor over threats to privacy on Monday, after an admission by Deutsche Telekom that it had surreptitiously tracked thousands of phone calls to identify the source of leaks to the news media about its internal affairs.
In a case that echoes the corporate spying scandal at Hewlett-Packard, Deutsche Telekom said there had been “severe and far-reaching” misuse of private data involving contacts between board members and reporters.
The disclosure, which was prompted by a report on Saturday on the Web site of the news magazine Der Spiegel set off a storm of protest from privacy advocates, journalists, and labor representatives at the company.
The German government, which effectively controls Deutsche Telekom through a 32 percent stake, demanded a thorough investigation, describing the spying operation as a “serious breach of trust.”… [Read the full story]
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