Senior officials in two federal departments considered hiring professional dumpster divers in efforts to find a missing USB stick containing sensitive information on more than 5,000 Canadians, Montreal Gazette reports. Human Resources and Skills Development Canada managers also considered burning the garbage in order to destroy the USB key if it was inside, according to e-mails revealed via access-to-information laws. Both ideas were abandoned, in the end. The USB stick contained data on pension applicants’ claims, and though employees are required to encrypt sensitive information stored on portable devices, the data was not encrypted.
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