Catharine Tunney reports:
The RCMP inadvertently sent an account of someone’s suicide attempt to the wrong email chain, leaving the details in the inboxes of more than 160 people, according to a report on the mishap.
The email included the person’s name and date of birth, details of the suicide attempt, the injuries they sustained and the name of the hospital where they were recovering, according to a copy of a Privacy Act breach report obtained by CBC News through an access to information request.
The case started last winter when officers responded to an emergency call and collected the personal information of the victim.
Read more on CBC.
I read the comments under the news story and was surprised that no one seemed to raise the question as to why the RCMP even needed to share so much sensitive identifiable information even with the senior management team. How and why do they need to know that a named individual attempted suicide by X means and incurred Y injuries and was recovering at Z hospital? Why wouldn’t that information be somewhat anonymized before sharing? If there’s some valid reason for sharing such identifiable and detailed information with anyone other than those who were first responders or who might be first responders in the future for that locale, I’d be curious to know it.