GoKawiilSecurity experts say a leak of Alberta’s provincial list of voters – nearly three million names, addresses and phone numbers – has created a potential public safety and political interference crisis that could have ramifications for decades.
Personal information could be used by criminals for everything from fraud and extortion to kidnapping and witness tampering. Authoritarian regimes, like Russia or China, could use the information to interfere in Alberta’s politics by directly contacting voters.
Both Elections Alberta and the RCMP have launched separate investigations to determine how the private information of millions of citizens from Alberta’s official List of Electors ended up posted online by a separatist group called the Centurion Project. It allegedly accessed the database provided to the Republican Party of Alberta.
“For organized crime, that kind of information is gold,” said Neil LeMay, a former RCMP major crimes investigator who now runs a private investigation and security consulting company.
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“It can be copied, traded, sold, cross-referenced and weaponized. In the hands of the wrong people, it becomes a criminal Rolodex — not for one election cycle, but potentially for decades.”
“Our data is in the wind, and that is a terrifying prospect,” said Patrick Lennox, former manager of criminal intelligence for the RCMP’s federal policing programs in Alberta.
Lennox said Russia, China and even the United States may have already scooped up the information.
“I think any authoritarian regime that is looking to undermine liberal democracies would be very interested in this type of data, because it enables them to communicate directly with citizens in a province that is about to have a separatist referendum,” he said.
“This is a treasure trove for them to be able to micro-target individuals and influence them to vote for separation.”
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