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Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
On January 9, 2019 the UK Information Commissioner's Office fined SCL Elections, also known as Cambridge Analytica, £15,000 for failure to comply with an enforcement notice the ICO issued in May 2018 ordering the company to respond in full to a subject access request submitted by US-based academic David Carroll. The company was also required to pay £6,000 in costs and a victim surcharge of £170. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham noted that UK data protection laws apply to all data…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
The results of a year-long review issued by the UK Information Commissioner's Office in November 2018 uncovered a "disturbing disregard for voters' personal privacy" on the part of 30 organisations, including social media platforms, political parties, data brokers, and credit reference agencies. Based on information uncovered during the investigation, the ICO sent 11 warning letters requiring action by the main political parties, and announced its intention to conduct audits; issued an…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
In 2019, a prominent page on the Facebook Business site cited the British Conservative Party as a "success story" at the 2015 general election, which put the party into power with a narrow majority. The site boasted that via Facebook the Conservatives had an 80.6% reach in key constituencies, 3.5 million video views, and a social context for 86.9% of all the ads served - and that as a result the party had defied the polls and achieved an outright majority.
https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
In November 2018, the UK government announced that 11 local authorities across England would participate in Voter ID pilots in the interest of gaining "further insight into how best to ensure the security of the voting process and reduce the risk of voter fraud". Five local authorities participated in pilots in the 2017 general election. The new pilots will test four models of identification checks: photo ID (Pendle, East Staffordshire, Woking), photo and non-photo ID (Ribble Valley, Broxtowe,…
Content type: Examples
9th February 2019
A flaw in the official 2018 UK Conservative Party conference app granted both read and write access to the private data of senior party members, including cabinet ministers, to anyone who logged in by second-guessing the email address they used to sign into the app. Twitter users claimed that one leading politician, Boris Johnson, had his avatar briefly replaced by a pornographic image, while another, Michael Gove, had his replaced by that of media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The app was created by…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
In November 2018, the UK government announced it would pilot voter ID for in 11 local authorities during thte 2019 local elections in order to gain insight into ensuring voting security and lowering the risk of voter fraud. The Cabinet Office deemed the pilots conducted in five local authorities during the 2018 local elections to be a success. Four models of checking are under consideration: photo ID (Pendle, East Staffordshire, Woking); one photo or up to two non-photo IDs (Ribble Valley,…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
In 2018, after the UK Cabinet Office said a trial of compulsory voter ID was necessary because reports of voter fraud had more than doubled between the 2014 and 2016 elections - a claim immediately disputed by a voter and upheld by the UK Statistics Authority. While it was true that there were 21 reports in 2014 and 44 in 2016, the number fell to 28 in 2017, small numbers to begin with. Crucially, more than twice as many people voted in 2016, the year of the EU referendum. None of the five…
Content type: Examples
8th December 2018
In October 2018, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and questions over Facebook's influence on the UK's EU referendum, Facebook announced it would add Britain to the US and Brazil on the list of countries where the company will no longer allow political groups to publish "dark" ads on its network. Among the changes: all paid-for political content will be automatically published in a public library for up to seven years; individuals and organisations running ads with political…
Content type: Examples
5th May 2018
After investigation, the UK's privacy regulatory, the Information Commissioner's Office has found that two small sections of the written scripts used by Blue Telecoms, a marketing firm that made calls on behalf of the Conservative Party during the 2017 general election, crossed the line from legitimate market research to unlawful direct marketing. The ICO has issued a warning to the Conservative Party rather than launching a formal regulatory action because, it says, the overall campaign was…
Content type: Examples
5th May 2018
Facebook and Twitter have advised Damian Collins, the chair of the UK Parliament's digital, culture, media, and sport committee, that the companies will hand over some information relating to the rearch of Russia-backed posts during the EU referendum. Facebook has already given the US Senate similar information about Russia-backed posts during the 2016 presidential election; this information showed that campaign ads and fake news generated by the Internet Research Agency troll factory in St…