‘Truly terrifying’: Alberta voter data breach raises fears for Canada’s electoral integrity | Canada

The illegal use of voter information by right-wing separatists in the province of Alberta has raised new fears about Canada’s election integrity by making valuable and “incredibly confidential” personal data easily accessible to malicious actors, security experts have warned.

The data breach, one of the largest in Canadian history, has sparked warnings of a “truly terrifying” new battleground over information, persuasion and foreign interference in already weakened democratic systems.

Activists in the oil-rich state have stepped up efforts to force an independence referendum in recent months. But the debate over secession, already rife with accusations of treason and mutual feuds, has been overshadowed by the revelation that a separatist-linked organization had illegal access to Alberta’s official voter roll. The database contains the names, home addresses and contact information of approximately 2.9 million voters.

Alberta Elections, the body that oversees voting in the province, said it had launched an investigation into how a far-right group was able to access the database and use it for a campaign to reach voters.

Separatist leaders recently unveiled an initiative that uses data-driven campaigning and grassroots mobilization to connect with voters.

Centurion Project organizer Emmott Kelsey during an online meeting with supporters he told the participants the app will “revolutionise” the way campaigns are run. He boasted that the software supporting him was “groundbreaking” and that it had been made available to Donald Trump’s White House.

“And we’re kind of the guinea pigs in this regard,” he said. The Guardian asked Kelsey to explain her remarks but did not receive a response.

A key figure in the Centurion Project is David Parker, a veteran political organizer in Alberta with deep ties to the separatist movement, US MAGA activists and far-right figures such as Tucker Carlson. owned by Parker previously faced hefty fines in Alberta Elections for violations of voting laws.

Jen Gerson, an Alberta-based journalist, said, “Parker is a surprisingly effective political organizer. What he did was try to create a digital grassroots organizing tool. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with that.” “But he needed the data to populate the application that forms the basis of Project Centurion.”

Gerson in March reported He said Project Centurion obtained a copy of the state’s voter rolls. Their source said they were able to access the Centurion Project’s database without using their real names or any traceable personal information.

Gerson said the lack of any security or protection was astounding.

“Anyone with a printer account and no credentials will be unable to access and potentially download information from the file,” he said. “If you knew this, you could access the entire data root file anonymously.”

Gerson reported his concerns to Alberta Elections in late March. However, the watchdog said its report was “interesting” but that Parker could have legally obtained the list from a data broker and concluded there was “no reasonable basis” for the investigation.

However, a month later, EA obtained a court order to shut down the database and launched an investigation. Canadian federal police, the RCMP and the Alberta privacy commissioner are also investigating the breach.

To prevent voter lists from being improperly shared, EA “seeded” voter lists with fake names, and the organization was able to confirm that the CP list was initially legally provided to the Alberta Republican party, a far-right party, and was then improperly shared.

The party said it told the Centurion Project not to use the data but did not say whether the list came from within the party. “We have been proactive on this issue prior to today’s injunction and will fully comply with Alberta Elections,” Leader Cam Davies said in a statement to The Canadian Press.

The state government accused the election department of failing to investigate the violation when it was first reported. But the EA says the state government weakened its investigative powers last year.

Elections Alberta said nearly 600 people had accessed the voter list, which it described as “incredibly confidential” and said it appeared Albertans were “unhappy, scared and concerned” about the situation.

“We have heard countless stories about the risks people face by having their information made public, including those of domestic violence survivors, law enforcement, marginalized communities and more,” the group said, calling on the government to change existing laws to prevent a similar breach in the future.

Parker denied using the Republican Party voter list and suggested the database was compiled from a third party.

“We have taken action to shut down the application until we are satisfied that the dataset complies with Alberta and Federal privacy laws. Centurion Project intends to fully comply with Elections Alberta’s investigation,” Parker said. he said in a statement.

In the statement, Parker said volunteers at the Centurion Project “did not have access to phone numbers or emails” and that the dataset belonged to a third party.

But during an online demonstration of the database for volunteers at an event on April 16, Parker demonstrated how any voter’s personal information could be found in the database. A witness to the event (an opposition NDP member) was shocked when Parker stood up. home address and phone number From Jason Kenney, former premier of Alberta. The witness later filed a criminal complaint with the police.

Kenney said he had hired a lawyer for advice and warned that the breach could affect domestic violence victims, journalists, activists, judges and other public officials for years to come.

“This has been a real wake-up call to the risks we’re playing here. We need to assume that all of our personal information and address is potentially falling into the hands of bad actors,” Gerson said. “People are very angry and very afraid. So if you don’t want these men in your home, why are you considering letting them run your country?”

The leak has become a political flashpoint in Alberta, but efforts to overturn election and privacy laws reveal the immense value of voter rolls and echo a similar fight emerging in the United States.

In recent months, the US Department of Justice lawsuit filed 30 states and the District of Columbia for not turning over complete copies of voter registration lists. States, including some controlled by Republicans, pushed back. Constitutionally guaranteed power concerns about election administration and concerns about data security and privacy laws. Suffrage groups lawsuit filed Regarding voter roll requests, the Trump administration accused him of paving the way for voter purges before the November midterm elections.

“Data is a significant force in modern politics, especially in the ways it is used. Powerful actors and authoritarian regimes are very creative and have real designs on dismantling the last remaining liberal democracy in North America,” said Patrick Lennox, the RCMP’s former director of criminal intelligence for federal policing programs in Alberta. “Since Trump came back to power, he has destabilized democracy to the point that I don’t think it can legitimately be called democracy anymore… And I worry that’s exactly the game being played in Alberta.”

The Centurion Project did not say which company developed the underlying software on which it is based, but sources familiar with the research say the company is based in the United States. The company did not respond when asked for comment by the Guardian.

Lennox warned that if the file was stored without appropriate safeguards, it could be intercepted by American data brokers who are subject to less stringent privacy laws than in Canada. The breach also came as the Trump administration threatened to subjugate Canada and signaled support for separatists in Alberta.

“It is out of the question for Americans to put digital sovereignty measures on their voter rolls,” he said. “Because it’s important to remember: The United States is also trying to tear our country apart.”

Washington is not the only external actor keeping a close eye on Alberta’s secession movement. Researchers recently warned that the province was being targeted by covert influence campaigns run by countries such as Russia and China. The Center for Global Democratic Resilience, the University of Regina, and DisinfoWatch have recently documented the scope of foreign interference campaigns, the proliferation of AI-generated videos, and the threat of interference and interference from Donald Trump and his allies.

Brian McQuinn, co-director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict at the University of Regina, noted that before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, researchers documented an increase in disputes over sovereignty in the country.

“There was a narrative that it wasn’t actually its own sovereign country, that it was an error of history. That’s the same language that Americans use in Canada,” he said.

Secret meetings between separatist activists in the Canadian province of Alberta and members of Donald Trump’s administration have already roiled the province.

“The Americans want us to be as weak as possible, and a secession movement that would hurt us in the negotiations is absolutely crucial,” McQuinn said. “When it comes to trade, when it comes to weakening us as much as they can, they’re advancing their own interests in that.”