B.C. LIBERAL EMAIL LIST LEAKED
Party blames ‘targeted hack’ for release of a spreadsheet containing voters’ personal information but the NDP isn’t buying it
Afew days ago, I was shown a remarkable document that appeared to be an internal B.C. Liberal Party spreadsheet showing the private email addresses of party contacts on Vancouver Island.
The document — freely available on the party website — was titled Generated Leads. It showed the email addresses and postal codes of about 100 people who responded to a Liberal public engagement effort.
The social media campaign was called, What Are Your Big Ideas For Vancouver Island? The Liberals said it was part of Premier Christy Clark’s plan for an island-specific campaign platform in the May election.
Here’s the way these things work: People send the Liberal party their ideas and email addresses. If the party likes what they read, they target those people as potential Liberal voters or “leads” in party lingo.
The postal codes are crucial because they pinpoint the individual riding where the potential Liberal voter lives.
The spreadsheet included the ideas sent in by each respondent. Some people wanted cheaper ferry service. Others wanted lower taxes. Some wanted better schools.
The Liberals said Monday the spreadsheet was stolen by computer hackers.
“The B.C. Liberal Party was the subject of a targeted hack,” Liberal communications director Emile Scheffel told me, adding the spreadsheet was the only data the hackers were able to steal.
“Our membership and donor data is stored in a separate system and was not compromised,” Scheffel said.
Whew! The donor data is safe! What a relief for those shadowy Liberal donors shuttled by tinted-window vans into that recent $5,000-a-plate fundraising dinner with Christy Clark in Kelowna.
But for those Vancouver Island residents, whose personal privacy was breached, the news of the “hacking” was not very reassuring.
“Well, that’s the last time I answer one of their surveys,” Eric Smith said. “I was happy to send them my suggestions in private, but that’s where I thought they would stay — in private.”
The Liberals sent out an email Monday advising people who participated in the survey that their personal privacy had been compromised.
“We deeply regret this intrusion into your privacy and have since taken steps to ensure the data entrusted to us is secured,” the email said.
Now here’s the crazy thing about all this: When I was originally shown this document last week, I was directed to a link on the Liberal party website where all this private information could be viewed online with the simple click of a mouse.
The spreadsheet was stored on a section of the Liberal website called “uploads” that did not require a user name or password. It was all there for anyone to see.
The link was disabled by the party at about 1 p.m. Monday, after I started asking questions.
But Scheffel, the party spokesman, insisted the Liberal website had been hacked.
He showed me some internal computer records showing “repeated and successful attempts over the weekend to hack into our website, using several different user name and password combinations.”
The opposition NDP isn’t buying it.
“Instead of admitting they mistakenly posted this document themselves, Christy Clark’s team is making completely unfounded allegations about being hacked,” NDP provincial director Raj Sihota said.
Here’s the most troubling part: The Liberals have been in power for 16 years. During that time, there have been thousands of government privacy breaches, including a computer hard drive that went missing with personal information on 3.4 million public-school students.
B.C.’s independent privacy commissioner said nearly three-quarters of all government-related privacy breaches are due to human error, not from hackers trying to steal private information.
The Liberals have not learned their privacy lessons. It’s now clear their management of private information has been just as sloppy at party headquarters as it has been in government.