Andrew Peplowski reports:
Montreal police say officers had good intentions when they required city hall visitors to provide their names, dates-of-birth and driver’s license numbers on Tuesday evening.
But they never should have left the sheets of paper, with all that information, behind at the end of the evening.
A reporter from the Journal de Montreal found the papers on a desk used by police officers as he was walking out of the building that night.
Read more on CJAD.
“Good intentions,” be damned. What right does a police officer have to demand people provide personal information to access their own city hall? There’s a bigger story here, I think, over and above the data breach. If city hall needs greater security, that’s a matter for the city to explore – not individual police officers.
It also may go to show that people likely just don’t know they may have a right to refuse giving such information.
And, chances are if someone did refuse they would be refused admittance.