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Path: utzoo!utcsri!utegc!utai!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis
From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Borrowed records from Revenue Canada
Message-ID: <493@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Nov-86 15:12:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.493
Posted: Thu Nov 20 15:12:03 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Nov-86 19:33:11 EST
References: <623@water.UUCP>
Reply-To: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science
Lines: 19

In article <623@water.UUCP> jmlang@water.UUCP writes:

>... knowing that government files, or for that matter any
>files containing personal information, can and will fall in
>unintended hands, I'm am not sure what the safeguards should
>be to minimise any damage. Anybody out there have any idea?

According to an article in yesterday's Globe and Mail, the shoebox in
question lived in a storage room whose walls contained a posted injunction
to return the box or specific fiches when finished with them. Apparently,
Revenue Canada employees didn't have to do anything more than sign out
what they needed; there was no human supervision.

Although I generally don't believe in technofixes, this is one situation in
which a computer system would never have allowed this theft to occur. Can
you imagine any "secure" system which would let a user say "RETRIEVE ALL TO
PRINTER"? A good computer system would log each access to a file, rendering
blanket theft easily detectable ("Mr Bloggins, why did you access nine
thousand files today?").