Two USB drives containing personal information on 2.4 million voters residing in districts within the Waterloo region of Southern Ontario, Canada were lost three months ago, according to recent disclosures from the agency who oversees general elections in Canada.
Offering an explanation as to why Elections Ontario waited so long to release word of the breach, Greg Essensa, their chief electoral officer, said, “I did not want to make an irresponsible public notification or worry Ontarians needlessly.”
Needless worry or not, the loss of so many records is being hailed as unprecedented by Ontario Privacy and Information Commissioner Ann Cavoukian. In an interview with The Record, she noted that it was a huge number, “larger than the size of most provinces… It is quite massive in its scale.”
The lost USB’s contained names, birthdates, addresses, gender, voting records from the previous election, as well as any other information given out by the voter themselves.
Essensa said that specialized commercial software, as well as internal software used by Elections Ontario would be needed to access the files on the lost devices. However, he didn’t mention how specialized the commercial software was, and that alone does now guarantee that the records cannot be accessed.
“I take this matter extremely seriously and I want to sincerely apologize to all Ontarians for any concern that this notification may cause,” he added.
Voters impacted by the breach are asked to monitor their financial records if they feel the need. The two employees responsible for the loss are no longer employed.