ICO: “We are at risk of developing a system of voter surveillance by default”

Nov 12, 2018News

After an 18-month investigation, a report on invisible processing and misuse of data for political is presented to Parliament by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). This has been described by the ICO as “the most complex data protection investigation we have ever conducted” with 30 organizations investigated, 33 interviews with individuals and 52 billion pages worth of data analyzed.

The report states that Leave.EU – The Brexit campaign group an Eldon Insurance – trading as GoSkippy – were fined total of £135,000 for serious breaches of the law that governs electronic marketing.

“We found a disturbing disregard for voters’ personal privacy by players across the political campaigning eco-system — from data companies and data brokers to social media platforms, campaign groups, and political parties.” said Elizabeth Denham, UK Information Commissioner. ICO is currently seeking a solution to this issue, a code of practice for the use of data in political campaign with legal force to enforce the codes.

The Annual Global Cybersecurity Day, held by Boston Global Forum, is a special event to inspire the shared responsibility of the world’s citizens to protect the Internet’s safety and transparency. This year, the Fourth Annual Global Cybersecurity Day Symposium will be held on December 12th at Loeb House, Harvard University, focusing on the issues of privacy and data protection. The event will have the participation of Mr. Liam Byrne, Member of Parliament for Birmingham, UK; he is one of the speakers at the symposium this year.