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Comment by talmand | Hacker News Reader

I do believe the National Revenue Minister is overreacting just a tad bit. Creating a game about phone support is conduct that is "offensive" and "unacceptable"? An investigation is required to ensure that confidential taxpayer information wasn't compromised?

So, fire him and then ask to start a potential criminal investigation over this?

Seems to me that politicians in Canada need something more substantial to complain about.

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My guess is that the content used in the game may have been garnered from his day job, and therein lies the risk.

There's a difference between "Lots of callers can't remember their SIN, I'll use that" and "David Johnson, of 123 Maple St, Vancouver, BC, gave 112211 as an invalid SIN, let's put him in the game".

I agree. I don't know the game, but it seems likely that there is more to it than your first example. I doubt that they would be reacting the way they are otherwise.

Of course, this might be my own misplaced optimism.

The distinction doesn't matter.

Callers agreed to their conversation recorded only on the condition that 1. it will be used for training purposes and 2. security purposes. There was never an agreement regarding the callers' conversation recorded to be used in a game that makes mockery of the callers and potentially make money from them.

I don't think he recorded it as much as remembered experiences he had and transcribed them down independently.

Take a listen to the video. It seems to me that he's imitating (badly) caller voices, not using recordings. That would indeed by highly unethical.

I hope you are not suggesting the guy asked people on the phone to answer his questions multiple times with different answers each time so that he could record them to create a branching storyline that the player chooses from in the game?

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