Nearly 3 million Alberta voter records leaked by a separatist group via data from the Republican Party of Alberta, exposing names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Key Takeaways
Elections Alberta salted the List of Electors with fake entries, tracing the breach to the Republican Party of Alberta headed by Cam Davies, who granted vendor access.
The Centurion Project built a searchable app on top of the leaked data and featured Rachel Notley’s home address in a training video.
A journalist warned Elections Alberta on March 31; the agency said it lacked reasonable grounds to investigate until April 27, a threshold raised by 2025 UCP amendments to the Elections Act.
Former RCMP officials warn the data enables foreign micro-targeting (Russia, China, US flagged explicitly) ahead of a potential Alberta separatist referendum in October.
Parker told the Globe he purchased a data compilation from an undisclosed vendor for $45,000 under NDA; Elections Alberta injunction forced the database offline.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters flagged a compounding fraud risk: the leaked data is sufficient to fraudulently sign people up for the separatist referendum petition, with some ridings claiming implausible 92.9% signature rates.
Canadian commenters pushed back on US comparisons, noting 26 years of federal privacy law create a different legal expectation than the US norm where voter data is routinely public or purchasable.
A concrete harm was documented during discussion: an Edmonton councillor relocated a domestic violence survivor after her address appeared in the breach, illustrating the immediate safety stakes beyond abstract threat modeling.
Notable Comments
@lukeinator42: Points out the leaked data is exactly what is needed to fraudulently sign voters onto the referendum petition, with suspiciously high signup rates reported in some ridings.
@kleiba2: “no-one’s going to be held responsible, no lessons are going to be learned” – argues no accountability will follow regardless of any inquiry.
