In what has become a common occurrence at Hamilton City Hall, the home address and personal cellphone number of a delegate seeking to speak to a City of Hamilton Board have been published online.
The latest incident involved Hamilton’s Police Service Board. The Board’s Executive Director is a City of Hamilton employee.
This is at least the third time an unredacted copy of the City’s delegation request form has been published online during the past 18 months. The fourth known delegate privacy breach involved internal staff sharing personal information with external parties.
In each of the past incidents, the City of Hamilton has promised its “award-winning” digital process improvements would prevent future privacy breaches.
The City of Hamilton requires anyone seeking to delegate to Council, committees, or local boards to provide their home address and personal telephone number. Failure to provide this information will result in the City not processing the request.
The City does not use this personal information for any purpose. There is no statistical analysis for trends, the City does not require delegates to live or conduct business within Hamilton, and the City only contacts delegates via email.
Here’s what I wrote after January’s breach:
The breach does not exist in isolation. It is part of an ongoing pattern of privacy breaches by the City of Hamilton. [The 2022 election advance voter data leak, the 2024 council delegates address and phone number leak, the 2024 cybersecurity failure.]
The City of Hamilton does not practice privacy by design in how it deploys technology, or in how it designs data collection.
Two key questions must be answered when collecting personal information: is it necessary and, when collected, is it secure?
City Council has no plans to change delegate data collection policies.
Production Details
v. 1.0.0
Published: July 24, 2025
Last updated: July 24, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman
Update Record
v. 1.0.0 original version