A very serious issue has come up in Alberta recently and I'm still trying to get my head around what in the ever-loving fuck is going on.
Essentially, the entire provincial voter list was leaked to the public, including names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.
Direct quote from
CBC article describing what happened:
Last week, millions of Albertans learned personal information like their full names, addresses and contact information were made available in a searchable database posted by separatist group the Centurion Project.
The list was legally obtained from Elections Alberta by the Alberta Republican Party. However that information is not to be shared with third parties, and it remains unclear how it ended up in the hands of the Centurion Project.
Basically, political parties receive the voter list as a matter of course, so they can use it for reaching out to the populace. (This explains why I occasionally get texts from the UCP, even though I've never actively given them my information.) However, the separatist party, the Alberta Republican Party, apparently leaked the voter list to a separatist group.
Elections Alberta has made a news post about this:
Message to Albertans from the Chief Electoral Officer re: Unauthorized Use of List of Electors. It outlines what happened. Apparently Elections Alberta is... looking in to it? But that doesn't change what happened. It should not have happened.
Edmonton city councilor Aaron Paquette made a post on the Edmonton subreddit expanding on some of the things stated in the Elections Alberta news post:
An update on the Alberta Electoral List Scandal - and how you are affected. I appreciate that he emphasizes that the privacy concerns here are not abstract, that the searchable database is not "like an oldschool phone book" (as some people trying to downplay the issue are saying) and that vulnerable people such as those escaping domestic violence could be at risk because their addresses were exposed.
Furthermore, apparently journalist Jen Gerson
informed Elections Alberta about the breach in March:
Jen Gerson, a journalist and political commentator who is the co-founder of The Line on Substack, said she wrote Elections Alberta on March 31 after a source contacted her about information on a website run by Alberta separatist group the Centurion Project that appeared to come from the provincial voters list.
On Thursday morning, officials with Elections Alberta appeared in an Edmonton courtroom where they successfully obtained a temporary injunction to force the Centurion Project into removing the voter information from its website. The group complied hours later.
Gerson said her source told her the information, which included the full names, addresses, contact information and electoral divisions of 2.9 million Albertans, was easy to access.
Gerson said she decided to alert Elections Alberta and not publish a story about what she had learned because of the sensitive nature of the information.
And in addition to this, the Separatists have apparently reached their required number of signatures on the petition to initiate a referendum on the separatism issue. The timing is suspicious. Elections Alberta currently has the petition
on hold, for two reasons:
1. Firstly, there is a judicial review pending due to a lawsuit from the ACFN and the Blackfoot Confederacy. The verification can't start until the review is completed.
2. Elections Alberta "seeds" fake names in their election list in case of leaks like the one under discussion. If any fake names show up on the petition, then clearly the separatist petition is using leaked information and it will need to be subject to "further review".
The situation is still developing, obviously.
And here I am, sitting here and thinking... What now?
I'm not entirely surprised that the separatists pulled a stunt like this. However, the question is... what is going to happen next, and will
anyone face consequences for this? The people who did this should absolutely get the book thrown at them, but I have no idea what that would entail or even what will happen next in general.
Also, I don't know if there is anything that ordinary Albertans can... do... about this. Aside from opposing both the separatist movement and the UCP (because the UCP and Danielle Smith in particular has allowed this bullshit to fester. And, knowing them, will continue to do so). But this is Alberta, so... uh. Hm.
What the ever-loving fuck is going on with my province, man? Seriously. wtf.
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Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.