The Personal Data Being Used To Get Your Vote

 

 

The Cambridge Analytica scandal threw light on how the Facebook data of millions was harvested and turned into a messaging tool. The revelations were criticised far and wide by politicians of all stripes. But now a Report from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has focused on the relationship between data brokers and the politicians here.

 

 

The ICO report has found that even limited information can be used in surprising ways.  For example, buying someone's name can lead to making guesses about their income, number of children and ethnicity, which is then used to tailor a political message for them. The report suggests that the British Conservative Party is doing just that, using so-called "onomastic data", whicht is information derived from the study of people's names which could identify their ethnic origin or religion. It has done that for 10 million voters, most of whom will be unaware of exactly how their information is being used.

 

Political parties can legitimately hold personal data on individuals to help them campaign more effectively. But sophisticated data analytics software can now combine information about individuals from multiple sources to find more about their voting characteristics and interests - something that many people might find disturbing. 

 

 

The Electoral Register forms "the spine" of data sources, according to PI, but beyond that it is surprisingly difficult to work out what the parties use one thisng that has become clearer is the role of data brokers. Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party make use of a product from Experian called Mosaic, according to the Open Rights Group (ORG), which describes Experian as being a "one-stop shop for data used in political profiling". 

 

Experian is better known as a credit rating agency, but it also acts as a data broker, along with others such as Equifax and Transunion.They collect data themselves or, in some cases, buy it from other companies, such as a credit card company. They then sell it on to advertisers, or, in this case, to political parties.

 

 

 

The BBC asked the Conservative, Labour and the Liberal Democrat parties how they use data and where they receive it from. None have replied. The ORG conducted its own investigation and as part of its research it asked people to request all data political parties held on them, something known as a Data Subject Access Request.  There were not many responses but the limited information found included: 

 

 

All the parties were asked whether they used data broker services in the 2019 election, but only the Liberal Democrats confirmed they did not, stating they felt it would not be compliant with the GDPR privacy law. The Labour Party did not reply while the Conservatives said that they did purchase commercially available data, but did not say what they did with it. 

 

 

 

The ICO says political parties need to be much clearer about how they intend to use personal data. But the Open Rights Group thinks it needs much tougher action. "If it does not crack down, there is no incentive for better behaviour," it said. One of the obvious ways would be to allow voters the ability to refuse the sharing of their data between a political party and a third party, such as a data broker.

 

 

Information Commissioner's Office UK:        CNet:         BBC:     Electoral Reform Society UK:      Yahoo Finance:

 

 

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