B.C. government ends public access to directory in place since 1930s

The B.C. government announced it’s ending public access to its government directory, citing cybersecurity and employee privacy risks.

The directory has previously been available so that anyone can look up the names of people employed by the provincial government, their department, their work email and their work phone number.

In a statement, the Ministry of Citizen Services said, “The directory was created to support legitimate contact with government, but the same information is available to anyone on the internet, including cyber threat actors.

“We fend off hundreds of cybersecurity attacks each day, and that risk has been increasing over the past few months as AI tools make it faster and easier to harvest public information and create more convincing, targeted messages and scripts.”

The ministry said they received proactive advice from law enforcement, including the RCMP, to shut the directory down.

“We recognize that people use the directory not only to contact government, but also to understand how government is organized and identify the right area to engage,” the statement read.

“We will be providing an updated directory page soon , including senior executive contact information for all government ministries. The updated version will direct users to ministry, service, and media contacts, while reducing the public exposure of individual employee contact information and associated cybersecurity risks.”

Jody Toor, MLA for Langley-Willowbrook and government services critic, said a directory of this nature has been in place and available since the 1930s.

Toor said that protecting people’s privacy should never be a reason to operate behind closed doors.

“The public has a right to understand how the government is structured, who is responsible for making these decisions and how taxpayer-funded ministries and services are managed,” she added.

“You can protect the privacy without sacrificing the accountability. I feel like British Columbians deserve both.”