OTTAWA: Canadian Revenue Agency has destroyed all text message records of its employees and has disabled logging of these messages in the future.
Emails, released through access to information legislation, reveal that Shared Services Canada, the federal organization responsible for information technology services, destroyed the records in the middle of a business day in August.
An official from Shared Services Canada wrote in an email on Aug 27 “Your request has been auctioned.” BBM and SMS are no longer logged and previous logs have been deleted.
Deputy assistant commissioner replied “Excellent” at the CRA the next day. “Thanks so much for your prompt action!”
The Canada Revenue Agency has confirmed that it instructed the organization to destroy those records and also no longer log the instant messages, including PINs, BBMs and regular texts, going forward.
CRA Philippe Brideau said since SMS and BBM messaging are non secure, transitory methods of communication are used only for routine and nonbusiness related purposes there are no requirement to maintain the transitory information.
