Saturday, December 16, 2006

Ken Dryden's Confidential Tax Info Online

Via the Canadian Press:

TORONTO (CP) - The confidential tax information of Liberal MP Ken Dryden and several sports personalities is available on the Internet courtesy of federal employees who are illegally leaking the information, The Canadian Press has learned.

Canada Revenue Agency workers are violating the Income Tax Act, the Privacy Act, and possibly criminal law by feeding information to former employee Alan Baggett, who in turn posts the disclosures to an Internet chat group.

"He quotes a guy I used to work with on one of my teams," an employee of the Toronto North Taxation Services Office told The Canadian Press on condition of anonymity.

"I went up to (the employee quoted) and said, 'You're feeding this stuff to Alan Baggett?' and he said, 'Oh, I really don't talk to him any more.' "

Baggett's chat group postings are highly critical of the workings of the federal agency, which collects billions in taxpayer dollars, and often reveal confidential tax information gleaned from the files of debt collectors.
[...]
The postings, titled Canada Revenue Agency's Story of the Week, have included MP and former hockey great Dryden, former Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Pat Burns and former Leafs player Borje Salming.

It appears that Baggett's postings don't violate the Income Tax Act (and he's not exactly a very literate guy either) but you'd think there would be some penalty for this kind of invasion of privacy.

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