What Does the Centurion Project Data Breach Mean for Alberta Independence？
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, James talks about the Centurion Project, an advocacy group that created a tool to help people find and claim their own voter list. The problem is, the data was stolen from a Republican Party of Alberta database.
Transcript
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Hi, it's James here at The Critical Compass. I'm back at the Edmonton River Valley and I wanted
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to talk about the Centurion Project. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is there's a lot we
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can learn from this situation but there's still a lot of bad and a lot of this is pretty ugly.
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So first, let's point out how the media is framing this and what are the claims being made.
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So this is framed as a data leak of 3 million Albertans' information.
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If you listen to the NDP or Naheed Nenshi, it sounds like 3 million Albertans were doxed at risk of harassment and credit fraud or identity theft.
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So the Centurion Project is essentially an advocacy group
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empowering people to stand up and take responsibility for those around them
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and encourage them to vote in the upcoming referendum.
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That's all it is, and the core idea is quite solid.
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Where it gets tricky is how they were implementing that,
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which is through a app and they had a searchable database and you would sign up so this is not
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out in the open until you sign up you do not have access to this once you sign up you can access
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this you can search for friends and family you can claim their names and now those are those people
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are under your wing for you to take responsibility and encourage them to vote so the source of their
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database that's where the issue currently lies elections alberta originally did not have an issue
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with their database and they're notified about a month ago they were not originally concerned
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because they couldn't verify if the list came from 411 canada post or any other third party
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vendor that will sell lists of names and addresses. So the searchable database was not inherently
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problematic but the issue came when Elections Alberta found salted names belonging to a voter
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list given to the Republican Party of Alberta. And the salted names are they are fake names
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And so what they would have done is searched for those names
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belonging to that particular version of the list.
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if the Republican Party sold that list to a third party
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or if it was handed directly to the Centurion project.
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The investigation is still ongoing and currently we don't know the chain of custody of the actual list itself.
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Currently the app is not available, so it was taken offline as soon as the cease and desist was given.
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so right now there's no excel file being passed around there's no giant list on a thumb drive
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being handed around this data breach was just a sign-in tool that people were using
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so to frame it like this massive breach of private information is maybe an overstatement
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and it's not surprising that people would frame it that way they're trying to win political points
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right now and that's understandable but even with that said I feel like the implementation
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maybe is a little bit sloppy and exposes greater risk to the movement through through this database
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I don't think an app was necessary, or I don't think a searchable database was necessary.
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So one way you could do it, you could have no database and just have people sign up and enter
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the names of those friends and family members that they're going to take responsibility for.
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And then if there's any conflicts where there's two people claiming the same person, then you'd
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have a little prompt and it would get you to resolve that duplicate entry. So essentially
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you would have a database built from people just self-entering information rather than a searchable
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database of three million Albertans. Anytime you have a tool or a database there are going to be
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privacy considerations and that's a hard enough area to navigate when you're a large corporation
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and you have people dedicated to making sure that no privacy issues arise with your product
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so just having a database I feel like that's risky and that's providing a a vector of attack
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Centurion Project broke the rules, then they should be held accountable
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and it is not actually the Republican list, it's not a voter
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with that, this tool still is a vector for criticism and it's also a vector for people
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to abuse this tool. If there's names that are in here that aren't on 411, then that's
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a vector of attack. I looked on 411 and I searched some friends and family members,
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even searched myself, and most of them were not on them. With any of these lists, there
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generally the ability to opt out to make sure that you can't be searched. It's important for
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high-profile individuals, judges, survivors of domestic violence, and others that do not want
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to be easily found. So we can't just say that 100% of this information can be accessed publicly
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anyways because that that's not entirely true so even with this tool antifa could sign up for this
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tool jump on and do some searches and harass some of the canvassers or other people in the movement
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so that that's a possibility and maybe that wasn't thought about in that that way that
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so anytime we have something like this there is the possibility of bad actors abusing this tool
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or somebody maliciously using a tool for something other than the intended purpose.
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With that being said, the voter list itself, the list of electors and names and addresses,
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that exists in some form and during an election cycle it's predicted that 10,000 to 15,000 people
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have access to this list in some form or another.
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and that's political parties that's staff members and that's volunteers doing canvassing and so
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maybe not the entire list but portions of that list for that writing so in one sense it wouldn't
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take much for an individual like an antifa member to get a few different volunteers and now they
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have access to the names and addresses of an entire city. So if anything good
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comes out of this, it would be a greater discussion on the access and use of
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these voter lists. I personally feel like Elections Alberta should have it and it
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should never leave their hands. I don't think it should be given to a single
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political party or advocacy group or anybody. It should just be for elections. Nobody likes
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unsolicited texts or calls anyways, and I don't think that's going to convince most people.
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So if we can revise that, and if that comes out of this, then I feel like that's a good thing to
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come out of this this potentially bad situation so unfortunately this entire investigation
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is painting the movement in a bad light even if the investigation finishes and the centurion project
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is completely innocent i don't think you'll undo the damage that it's done it's given a lot of ammo
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to those who want to smear the movement. All they have to say now is you can't trust these people
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with data. I don't know how this investigation will go. We're still waiting on more information,
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but I know this will continue to be weaponized against the movement.
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Even the simple act of Elections Alberta sending 500 cease and desist letters to people who logged
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on to the website to access the tool that's going to be used to smear the movement as well
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it again it makes it look like there's a list floating around being shared a giant excel file
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etc if people don't have access to the tool they don't have access to any of the search functions
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these individuals who logged in were never given a file they weren't given an excel sheet they
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weren't given something that could be distributed so that that is the difference there the other
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odd thing is that elections alberta would even declare an investigation because that pushes it
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into the court of public opinion and we know that once the damage is done it's hard to
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undo that damage in the public eye once they've already made up their minds. And this is how it
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works. You have a loud headline and a very, very quiet retraction. Or in one article, loud headline,
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then you scroll down to the bottom and maybe they add a little bit of context, just a little bit.
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So this is what we're fighting against and we have to be extra careful going forward.
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And like I've said before, we can't be directing our hatred towards each other.
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We cannot go around demonizing every other person in the movement
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just because they haven't matched your level of outrage.
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We have to keep focused on communicating to friends and family members
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