Privacy breach should be considered for prosecution, commissioner says
Privacy breach should be considered for prosecution, commissioner says
Publish Date: 2026-06-17 09:45:00
Source Domain: cabinradio.ca
The NWT’s privacy commissioner says the Tłı̨chǫ Community Services Agency should consider referring an “egregious” privacy breach to territorial authorities for prosecution.
According to a recent report by commissioner Andrew Fox, a former employee of the Tłı̨chǫ Community Services Agency, or TCSA, forwarded 654 emails from his work email to his personal email account over a 22-month period.
Several of those emails contained private personal or health information. Fox said the employee did not have the authority to share any of the emails outside the TCSA.
“This is one of the more egregious privacy breaches my office has reviewed,” he wrote.
“The duration and repetition of disclosing work-related email to his own personal email demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the privacy protections TCSA had in place.”
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Fox said while he is not aware of any previous case of a public body referring a privacy breach for prosecution in the NWT, he recommended that the TCSA provide the territorial prosecutor with evidence it collected during its investigation of this breach.
The report does not state the name of the former employee nor the role he held with the TCSA, other than that he worked in a unit that provides healthcare services to people in their homes.
According to Fox’s report, the breach was discovered after two TCSA employees found that a text message containing a photo of a client had been sent from a shared work phone to a number they did not recognize in October 2025.
The employees reported the matter to their manager, who learned the phone number belonged to another employee. Wondering if that employee had sent other messages to his personal account, management requested an audit of the employee’s work email.
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The audit found that between January 18, 2024 and November 26, 2025, the employee had forwarded 654 work emails to…
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