The Canadian Press is reporting what appears to be a burglary that specifically targeted a computer containing Tamil migrants’ personal information at the Toronto office of the Canadian Tamil Congress:
The congress says it contained the names and information of hundreds of migrants.
A spokesman for the congress, David Poopalapillai, says it was a “deliberately targeted attack,” because other computers and a flat screen TV were left behind.
The identities of the migrants are subject to a publication ban ordered by the Immigration and Refugee Board.
No mention as to whether the data were encrypted.
Update 1: Kelly Grant of the Globe and Mail reports:
A computer containing the names, birth certificates and contact information of “hundreds” of the 492 Tamils who arrived in British Columbia aboard the MV Sun Sea in August was stolen during a break-in at the headquarters of the Canadian Tamil Congress.
“Our immediate concern is about the families back home in Sri Lanka,” said David Poopalapillai, national spokesman for the CTC. “We are quite worried.”
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has placed a publication ban on the names of the migrants, in part to protect their Sri Lankan relatives from reprisal. But the CTC has most of their names on file because the non-profit organization has been trying to connect the ship’s passengers with family back home.
Update 2: Now they’re claiming that only a “few” migrants had data on the computer. Andrea Woo reports for the Vancouver Sun:
But in an interview late Sunday, Congress spokesman David Poopalapallai said the situation has been assessed and the damage is “not that bad, because our entire system is on a server.
“[Our computer technicians] came and assured us that whatever they took, it’s nothing much, because most of the information is on the server, not on the individual computers.”