More than 500 Albertans who accessed a public, searchable database that revealed the personal information of millions of voters have been issued cease-and-desist letters.
In a statement to CBC News Thursday, officials with Elections Alberta confirmed that Alberta chief electoral officer Gordon McClure issued the letters last night.
The letters were sent to 23 people that the Centurion Project, a separatist group, identified as having received a voters list from Centurion. The letters also were sent to another 545 people that were identified as having accessed the list.
Some of the people who were issued the letters — formal demands to halt allegedly unlawful activity — have also been ordered to sign a declaration that they will comply.
“The 23 people who were provided the list are required to provide a signed declaration [that] they have complied with the direction. They have 48 hours to comply,” the statement reads.
Elections Alberta was granted a temporary injunction last week against Centurion and the Republican Party of Alberta over the unauthorized use of an Alberta electoral list.
A website created by Centurion featured a publicly accessible database that included the names, addresses and voter registration details of nearly three million people.
The temporary injunction ordered the electoral database be pulled down, and said Centurion Project officials must hand over the names of everyone who had accessed it. The injunction also bars the Republican Party from sharing any electoral list with unauthorized users.
The legal battle over the database is expected to return to court this summer.
Elections Alberta’s bid for a permanent injunction against Centurion and the Republican Party of Alberta is set for a special hearing in the Court of King’s Bench later this summer.
The date was set following a brief court hearing in Edmonton on Thursday, during which Elections Alberta lawyer Joseph Redman said he had been in contact with lawyers for both the Republican Party and the Centurion Project and they agreed to the date.
Redman told the court that all parties needed time to file affidavits and prepare arguments and requested an adjournment, which was granted by Justice Thomas Rothwell.
Lawyers for the Centurion Project and the Republican Party were not present in court Thursday and not immediately available for comment.
An investigation by Elections Alberta concluded that the details included in the database were pulled from an official voter list legitimately obtained by the pro-independence Republican Party of Alberta.
Each electoral list is “salted” with a few fictitious names that makes such documents easier to trace in the event of a breach.
Such lists are only distributed to political parties and elected officials and must not be shared with third parties.
How the list managed to change hands remains unclear.
The database remains under investigation by Elections Alberta and the Alberta RCMP. It is also under review by Diane McLeod, the information and privacy commissioner of Alberta, who has signalled that she may not have the authority to launch a full investigation because Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act does not apply to political parties.
The database has since been taken down and officials with Centurion Project said it will comply with Elections Alberta’s investigation.
The group’s leader, David Parker, has likened the database to a phone book and said the list was intended to be used by their volunteers to search for friends and acquaintances as they canvassed for supporters.
The illegal exposure of voter information has prompted calls for legislative changes to better protect voter lists and triggered growing calls for a public inquiry.
Questions surrounding the database, how it was obtained and who signed on to access the voter details have since erupted across Alberta’s political landscape.
The United Conservative Party caucus confirmed Tuesday that caucus staff attended an online meeting last month hosted by the Centurion Project, but said the staff believed the data being presented at the gathering had been legally obtained.
Premier Danielle Smith has said she only learned about the breach through media reports last week. She said she only learned about the meeting — during which Parker demonstrated how the database worked by searching former premier Jason Kenney’s name — when the NDP made it public.
She has said she wants those responsible to be “held accountable under the law.”
