As reported by many media sources, it seems that the personal information of some 2.4 million Ontario voters has simply gone missing over at Elections Ontario—and has been missing for quite some time. According to the Toronto Star, “Two USB keys containing names, addresses, genders, birth dates and whether or not an elector voted in the last election — as well as any other personal information updates provided by electors — vanished at the end of April,” and after an obviously fruitless three-month search, the elections agency has now decided to make this information public.
It seems that up to 20 or 25 ridings could have their residents’ info placed into the wrong hands, although Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa assures that “In order to access the data on the USB keys you need special Elections Ontario software.” Right, because hackers can unencrypt data from sites such as Yahoo, eHarmony and LinkedIn, but the Ontario government’s code is just too hard to crack. Somehow, I’m not so reassured…
Alas, while I don’t partake in online matchmaking or professional networking, I did vote in the last two provincial elections. And while my current riding of Trinity-Spadina wasn’t on the Star’s list of “impacted electoral districts,” I did live in Toronto Centre until 2009. Here’s opening Elections Ontario does a better job of updating its information than they did in securing it…
