ALBERTA — Elections Alberta obtained a court order to shut down an online voter database operated by the Centurion Project after determining the tool was built from a copy of the official electoral list released to the Republican Party of Alberta. The Centurion Project subsequently took down its online tool.

Elections Alberta maintains the electoral list, a database containing names, addresses, and voting districts for millions of Alberta citizens. Political parties in the province can legally access the list but are prohibited from sharing it with third parties.

Whenever Elections Alberta releases a copy of the electoral list, it salts the list with additional bogus entries. Those fabricated entries inserted into the version provided to the Republican Party of Alberta later appeared in the Centurion Project's online voter tool, which the agency identified during its investigation.

Following the investigation, both the Republican Party of Alberta and the Centurion Project publicly pledged to respect the law. Elections Alberta announced that the list used by the Centurion Project was a copy of the version legitimately released to the Republican Party of Alberta.

The technique used by Elections Alberta is a form of canary trap, a tool used to identify leakers or double agents. To set a canary trap, a document, image, or database is shared with each recipient with unique, tiny changes, so that any leak containing those changes can be traced to the responsible recipient. The term stems from Tom Clancy's 1980s thriller Patriot Games.

The method has been employed in a range of settings. Tesla and Apple have used canary traps, and the technique was used to stop the leak of Star Trek film scripts.