Statistics Canada Asks for Banking Information of 500,000 Canadians

Everyone knows that it’s not a matter of if your private information will be breached. It’s a matter of when. I don’t have much of an expectation of privacy these days. A search in the Amazon application on my iPhone means that I’ll start seeing Facebook ads for that item. Google maintains a timeline of my visits to various locations. Video cameras are everywhere.

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What I don’t expect is the leader of my country to defend a government agency known to have a long history of mishandling information when they ask my bank to hand over all of my personal banking history and personally identifiable information. Statistics Canada, our national statistics agency with a mandate that “ensures Canadians have the key information on Canada’s economy, society and environment that they require to function effectively as citizens and decision makers.”, has asked for the personal banking information of 500,000 Canadians to be released to them.

This means that 1 in 20 Canadians will have all of their banking information and personally identifiable information turned over to a government agency that has failed security audits. A report from earlier this month indicated that 50 percent of government agencies that accept credit card payments have failed to obtain PCI certification – including Statistics Canada, the agency asking for all our financial data.

For those unfamiliar, PCI is the Payment Card Industry. The PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) is a global entity dedicated to developing security standards related to account data protection. They have developed the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) among others. The PCI SSC was founded by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover Financial Services and JCB International. Anyone processing, storing or otherwise interacting with credit card data associated with these companies must adhere to the PCI DSS and undergo annual testing (Read more...)