Posts Tagged ‘David O’Brien’
Toronto Hydro Admits to Serious Privacy Breach and TO Hydro Legal Department Contacts http://laforet.ca
As requested by a lawyer who works for Toronto Hydro Corporation I would like to advise you that the links I provided in ‘THES Illegal Application Accepted by Bought and Paid For Ontario Liberal Government’ have been renewed after it was found that Toronto Hydro Energy Services exposed the personal information of hundreds of Guildwood residents, myself included, as part of hundreds of privacy violations they committed.
In the early hours of April 15 2009, I wrote a blog entry called ‘THES Illegal Application Accepted by Bought and Paid For Ontario Liberal Government’. In it I included two links to Toronto Hydro’s Project Evaluation Report and another to the Project Evaluation Report’s Appendices. I titled them “Toronto Hydro Energy Services Illegal Application – Project Evaluation Report” and “Toronto Hydro Energy Services Illegal Application Appendices. I used the word ‘illegal’ because Toronto Hydro Energy Services has failed to comply with the legal requirements one is expected to meet to get to the point of filing a Project Evaluation Report for public review.
It turns out these links which I provided to folks in good faith to allow as many people as possible to read and comment on Toronto Hydro’s illegal application were in fact linked to reports that breached the privacy of hundred of respondents who have come forward to participate in the sham consultation process. Toronto Hydro Energy Services failed to live up to it’s legal obligation to protect the private information of hundreds of individuals who wrote to them and made their information easily accessible by anyone with a .pdf reader and a limited understanding how .pdfs work.
David O’Brien, President of Toronto Hydro Corporation, wrote a response to me this afternoon after I complained about a breach of my personal information. The subject line he chose was “Violation of Privacy” . In the body of the email he states “Toronto Hydro Energy Services advises that personal information was inadvertently provided in the digital copy of an Appendix to the Project Evaluation Report for the proposed Anemometer in Lake Ontario.”
He goes on to explain it has been pulled from the website, would be corrected and a new copy would be posted, this time without violating the privacy of hundreds of Guildwood and other Scarborough Bluffs residents.
Before I got this email however, I noted there was a considerable amount of traffic on my website considering I had not written anything in days. Toronto Hydro Corporation logged a total of 73 page visits on http://laforet.ca today between 8am and 5:30pm. Considering the ‘Anne Mometer‘ incident the folks at Gartner Lee (where the Project Evaluation Report was drafted) and Toronto Hydro Corporation had stopped what were 30 page views a day visits and have opted for more discreet, less frequent visits.
Around 5:15pm today, I got an email from Toronto Hydro Corporation’s Legal Department. Any email that begins with “Dear Mr. Laforet: Your blog currently contains…” generally can’t be expected to end well. Especially if it’s marked ‘high priority’ and coming from someone whose title is ‘Senior Commercial Solicitor’.
That being said; this email wasn’t a libel chill or what one might expect a blogger to receive from a corporation one is jousting with. That’s what makes it kind of neat.
Toronto Hydro’s legal department states “That version of the Project Evaluation Report and appendices has been removed from the Toronto Hydro Energy Services web site and has been replaced with a revised version that restricts the display of personal information.”
“We are requesting that you please immediately remove the current link and replace it with the following (and advise your readers that a new link is now available):”
For clarification the link Toronto Hydro’s legal department has asked me to correct is the ‘Toronto Hydro Energy Services Illegal Appendices’ to ensure it is the right version of their illegal appendices and not the one that also contravenes privacy legislation is made available. I’ve also corrected the link to ‘Toronto Hydro Energy Services Illegal Project Evaluation Report’ – the one I referred to as Bull Shit.
Regular readers at http://laforet.ca are aware that Toronto Hydro Energy Services has often been invited to respond unedited to any of the accusations I’ve made about their conduct plan or other information relevant to this proposal. In fact, there is a standing offer out there. At no point has anyone from Toronto Hydro Energy Services ever taken me up on this, and frankly when I saw all the activity from Toronto Hydro Corporation today on my site, I was anticipating a libel chill – although it would be baseless, it is a tactic big bullies have often used against their online detractors.
When I received an email from a lawyer with Toronto Hydro Corporation who had read ”THES Illegal Application Accepted by Bought and Paid For Ontario Liberal Government” and knew someone at Toronto Hydro Corporation had viewed “A Process As Tainted As the Lake Bed They’d Like to Disturb” and The Entrenched Corporate Irresponsibility of Toronto Hydro Energy Services in addition to a number of other pieces, part of me was intrigued that there was no mention of the language I’ve used to describe Toronto Hydro Energy Services.
I’m not a lawyer, but I have a reasonably sound understanding of law. I would like to think in a situation like this, if I was on their side of the fence, I would not have someone from a legal department contact an individual who regularly lays body blows on the organization requesting his help in minimizing the impact of that organization’s breach of law. I would only contact someone like that if they crossed the line, but certainly not after having read so many unanswered charges. If I was on the other side of this particularly situation, I would have asked O’Brien (who wrote me anyways on this topic and likely with legal input) to throw in a P.S. or something.
I am someone who has demonstrated his concern for the Guildwood community through years of public involvement. One of the men or women spray painting hand wells, after making sure THES would no longer continue killing family pets with them, could have asked and I would have gladly complied.
Naturally I do stand by comments I’ve made and have stated in past I am fully prepared to back them up, if ever challenged to. But for THES to have someone in their legal department to not take issue with any of this and to contact me about something that is resolved by simply killing the links and letting me figure it out on my own, I found interesting.
To me, it demonstrated they too recognize nothing I’ve said has crossed the line and isn’t actionable. Which in itself raises some interesting questions about what their internal legal opinion is of their own situation and conduct. Personally I like to make sure I am prepared to defend my actions before doing anything, but I’ve found a link with the advice for the folks at Toronto Hydro Energy Services to review: How to Respond to Accusations When Guilty
As I said before, I’m not a lawyer, but the actions of Toronto Hydro Energy Services and it’s employees and agents have been so inappropriate, I’ve known for months and have been open about how crappy of a spot they’ve put themselves in.
4 Comments »
