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Glitch hits new resident cards
Apr. 15, 2003. 01:00 AM
Glitch hits new resident cards
More than 4,600 recalled
Ottawa says no security breach
ALLAN THOMPSON
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA—The immigration department has been forced to recall more than 4,600 of its new high-tech permanent resident cards because of a technical defect.
It will cost the government $70,000 to fix the error and issue new cards.
A glitch in the information stripe on the back of 4,619 of the new wallet-sized cards was detected on March 6 by immigration officials doing a quality control check.
The production line was stopped and a computer software problem was corrected within 24 hours. But a letter notifying cardholders of the recall was not issued until April 4.
For some reason, the immigration department chose not to make the recall public and did not post a notice on its Web site.
Immigration department spokesperson Maria Iadinardi said the recall involved a relatively small number of cards out of the 240,000 cards — less than 2 per cent — that have been issued so far, so the department opted to send letters directly to all of the cardholders rather than putting out a public notice.
"The problem is the optical stripe which stores encoded information on the cards. And it affects those that were produced for clients who landed (in Canada) before 1973,'' she said.
Iadinardi also stressed that the permanent resident cards are secure. "There was no breach of security,'' she said.
The recall letter urges cardholders to return them for replacement, a process which is supposed to take three weeks. There will be no charge.
Glitch hits new resident cards
Apr. 15, 2003. 01:00 AM
Glitch hits new resident cards
More than 4,600 recalled
Ottawa says no security breach
ALLAN THOMPSON
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA—The immigration department has been forced to recall more than 4,600 of its new high-tech permanent resident cards because of a technical defect.
It will cost the government $70,000 to fix the error and issue new cards.
A glitch in the information stripe on the back of 4,619 of the new wallet-sized cards was detected on March 6 by immigration officials doing a quality control check.
The production line was stopped and a computer software problem was corrected within 24 hours. But a letter notifying cardholders of the recall was not issued until April 4.
For some reason, the immigration department chose not to make the recall public and did not post a notice on its Web site.
Immigration department spokesperson Maria Iadinardi said the recall involved a relatively small number of cards out of the 240,000 cards — less than 2 per cent — that have been issued so far, so the department opted to send letters directly to all of the cardholders rather than putting out a public notice.
"The problem is the optical stripe which stores encoded information on the cards. And it affects those that were produced for clients who landed (in Canada) before 1973,'' she said.
Iadinardi also stressed that the permanent resident cards are secure. "There was no breach of security,'' she said.
The recall letter urges cardholders to return them for replacement, a process which is supposed to take three weeks. There will be no charge.