Privacy Commission intervenes in internet gambling debacle

Two weeks on from the launch and almost immediate collapse of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation’s first online gambling venture, the PlayNow.com website remains down as technicians work on security problems that exposed player accounts.
This week the Canadian province’s privacy commissioner intervened, requiring that BCLC give an undertaking that it will not reactivate the online casino website until she is satisfied that users’ private information will be fully protected.
Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has announced that she is conducting a review of the situation following a complaint to her office about a breach of privacy. Denham’s office says she’s working with the provincial government’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch to determine what happened and evaluate the work being done to fix it.
The lottery corporation initially said the site crashed on its first day because of overwhelming demand but has since backed away from that statement and admitted that a system glitch caused users to inadvertently switch accounts.
The fact that a provincial government would go online in a technical sense, apparently without consulting with the many highly experienced online gambling organisations and individuals available in Canada has astonished many industry observers, who point out that the protection of private and personal information is a critical element in online gambling that can be effectively safeguarded by widely used industry technologies.

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