What we learned
- The information commissioner is taking enforcement actions against Leave.EU and Arron Banks’s Eldon Insurance. A total of £135,000 in fines will be levied against the two organisations for their practice of sharing mailing lists without consent, with the possibility of more if other breaches are found.
- Facebook faced harsh words, but little action, with the ICO referring the company to the Irish data protection authority for action over its surveillance practices. “There’s a fundamental tension between the advertising business model of Facebook and fundamental rights like the protection of privacy,” the Information Commissioner said.
- Cambridge Analytica may not exist any more, but the rump of the company is facing its own prosecution over failure to cooperate with a request for personal data from a US citizen.
- The Electoral Commission was unable to answer many questions, owing to various ongoing investigations, including the National Crime Agency inquiring into the source of Arron Banks’s donations to Leave.EU. Representatives from the commission expressed frustration over a separate gag preventing disclosure of a £435,000 donation to the DUP from a Scottish body.
- The Electoral Commission also bemoaned the slow pace of legislation to grant the body more powers, noting that it had first suggested a requirement for imprints on online political communications in 2003, and had been asking for the ability to levy higher fines – the current maximum is £20,000 – since at least 2015.
- The Advertising Standards Authority called for the digital advertising industry to begin paying its fair share of the regulator’s costs. The ASA is funded by a 0.1% levy on ad spend, but very few digital advertisers pay the tariff.
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And that’s it. The committee disbands to head off and take another private meeting elsewhere.
Jo Stevens asks for a substantial levy on tech companies to fund regulatory bodies. Parker replies: “The funding of the ASA has always relied on a levy, a 0.1% levy, paid for by companies buying advertising.
“The movement of advertising online poses a structural challenge for that. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to crack that problem, but we’re not there yet. We need everyone to contribute meaningfully and fairly to the ASA system.
“That is something, I think, we need to keep working on. My preference would be for it to be done within the ASA system we’ve got at the moment with more funding from the parts of the digital advertising system that is not currently contributing fairly.”
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Collins is now fighting for the rights of people who buy fake Hamilton tickets on Viagogo through Google adverts. He spends rather a long time on it before noticing the clock and handing over to Simon Hart, who asks whether he could be held liable for false posts on Facebook.
Parker again highlights that the ASA doesn’t regulate political speech.
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Collins brings up Martin Lewis’s campaign against fake adverts on Facebook using his image. Parker: “The ads that reappear are different ads. But this is a perfect example of what I was talking about, we need to build new procedures with large online platforms like Facebook.”
Collins asks whether this failure to pre-clear is endemic to Facebook. “I don’t see it quite like that. Google and Facebook sign up to the ASA system. In their ad policies, they say that advertisers have to comply. There’s a genuine question over whether they just pass that on to their advertisers, and people who spot and report them.
“We’re talking to them at the moment about how we can build those systems and processes.”
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Sites such as Facebook that are running adverts and making money from them should ensure they take down ads that make false claims, says Parker. “We need to make sure that our rulings are applied automatically across these large online platforms, and even to stop them going up in the first place.
“How can we work more closely with the online platforms to make sure that happens?”
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Parker says that “around 88% of our actions relate to online advertising.
“Of course there are still big challenges that we have to crack, but that is where we are focusing our attentions.”
Pow highlights that the ASA’s code doesn’t apply to political advertising.
Parker: “We don’t cover it, no, and the reasons for that are that our system for regulation relies on the people that we are regulating buying into our regulation. The political parties and big campaign groups have never agreed to comply with our codes.
“There are things that one needs to think about around free speech,” Parker says. “If a regulator was regulating the political parties and campaigning groups ... to make sure they agreed with a code of practice, it would need to make sure that it was drawing the line between strong expressions of political opinion and straightforward misrepresentations of fact. Those are rare, and it’s often the case that one person’s straightforward expression of fact is another person’s political opinion.”
But, he adds, “if someone were interested in signing up to such a code, we think we could help them. But we cannot take this on ourselves when these very important preconditions are a very long way from being met.”
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Rebecca Pow opens the questioning of the ASA’s Guy Parker, asking whether it’s time for real regulation to take over from the advertising industry’s self-regulation.
“We regulate advertising in all media, including online,” Parker says, “and not just paid-for advertising.”
“The standards we apply are almost, without exception, the same for broadcast and non-broadcast advertising. Around 75% of the work we do is around encouraging adverts to not be misleading. The rules we have in our code are basically the same as the rules in statute that require that ads aren’t misleading.
“The standards between the two are very similar.”
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Somehow Damian Collins has managed to issue a response to the first session with the ICO while still chairing two further sessions. The magic of having staff.
He says:
I welcome today’s report from the Information Commissioner’s Office as a sign of the determination of the regulatory authorities to root out breaches of the law that threaten to undermine our democratic political system. It puts on notice any organisation that considers using people’s data indiscriminately in a battle to win votes. They will be subject to intense scrutiny.
On Facebook, I welcome the information commissioner’s comments that the platform needs to change and take much greater responsibility, and her call for Facebook to be subject to stricter regulation and oversight. It is noted that she thinks it would be ‘very useful’ for Mark Zuckerberg to appear in person to answer questions from my committee.
Looking to the future, we hear loudly the opinion of the information commissioner that the time for self-regulation is over and a time of accountability is here where parliament sets the objectives and outcomes for social media companies to follow, rather than the regulator taking on individual complaints.
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And that’s it for the Electoral Commission. One more round of questions for the Advertising Standards Authority, and then we’re done.
Collins: “Are we going to have a debate about electoral communications, where the restrictions for TV and radio don’t work in a world where people are getting information from multiple channels?”
Bassett says that the approach should be not to look at each platform in isolation, instead bringing in regulation that works across different media. “I think that that’s going to be really important alongside some of the other regulations we’ve made.”
“Things have changed very very quickly. Over just the three years I’ve been at the commission, they’ve changed greatly. What’s really important is that we keep our improvement moving, and that we recognise that this is changing the nature of politics is changing, and the nature of campaigning is changing.”
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Farrelly asks whether there’s a party political component to the lack of action from the government over granting new powers to the Electoral Commission (through an odd metaphor about being asleep at the wheel or driving deliberately off the road). Bassett, of course, dodges the question, but says that she is pleased with some of the responses to its reports from earlier this year.
“It is very difficulty for the government because there is a real lack of legislative space for this. So much electoral law is in primary legislation. We’ve got a really good piece of work done by the Law Commission looking at electoral administration, that’s been sitting there for three years.
“But in the current legislative timetable, that’s unlikely.”
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Collins asks how online campaigning should be regulated. “Imprints would be at the top of the list,” says Bassett, forcing campaigners to reveal who has paid for political campaigning online, as they do offline now. The EC recommended that requirement in 2003, but it still hasn’t been passed, she says.
“But it might be that there are different requirements that would achieve the same goal.”
Collins asks whether online campaigning should require campaigners to register, and Bassett warns that it could hinder legitimate debate, since the current rules were set with a specific limit of £10,000 on how large you have to be before registration.
Collins: “If I spent £9,000 in an individual constituency on online campaigning, that would be a large spend though.”
Bassett: “But you have to ask whether the same money would just filter out some other way.”
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The SNP’s O’Hara says: “You say that you had reasonable suspicion that Arron Banks was not the true source of the £8m. Can I ask about another source of money, from the constitutional research council, who gave £435,000 to the DUP. Did you investigate why an unincorporated body in Scotland gave the DUP almost half a million pounds that was then used in the referendum campaign to advertise in a newspaper in London?”
Bassett notes that “any donation made in Northern Ireland before 2017, we are restricted in what we can say. We are frustrated by the decision not to take this back to 2014, which would have allowed us to be much more transparent.”
Edwards adds that the DUP was required to file quarterly reports, which they did, and that they verified them. “If we find that donors on the reports were impermissible, then we can then talk about them. We cannot talk about them, because the donors were permissible.”
O’Hara pushes, but Edwards is unable to provide any further information on the specifics.
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Farrelly asks about Facebook’s new code of conduct for political campaigning in the UK, which comes into effect tomorrow.
Bassett notes that the EC doesn’t have any powers outside of an electoral period, but says that they’re “very keen to make sure that we’re asking the right questions. It’s good that Facebook is at least talking to us, and coming forward with some solutions, but it’s reaching the point that we need to set out as a statutory minimum what is expected of them.”
Farrelly: “You’ve called for greater fining powers, similar to other bodies. What response have you had?”
Bassett: “The government is open to consider it, but at the moment, not. They responded to our 2017 general election report last week, and in that response I don’t think they’re convinced that that’s the most appropriate route. We’ve not yet had the opportunity to discuss it with him.
“Their response seems to suggest we should be referring more people to the police, but that conflates civil and criminal law.
“We continue to think that the £20,000 maximum fine is very low, in relation to the sums that campaigners are spending.”
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Has anyone fined by the Electoral Commission over wrongdoing in the referendum paid the fines yet? No, says Edwards. The fines are being appealed, which means they don’t have to be paid yet.
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Rebecca Pow asks whether it is important that the NCA finish its investigation before 29 March 2019. Bassett says she doesn’t think she can answer that, but Pow pushes. What if on 30 March, the NCA finds massive wrongdoing? “I don’t think that’s something we can comment on, it’s a matter for parliament.”
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“You certainly shouldn’t be assuming that the illegal activity had an effect on the outcome of the referendum,” Bassett says. “There have been some studies, but there isn’t any strong evidence.”
Bassett asked about social media regulation by Clive Efford: “We remain concerned that we need all of the different social media platforms to be engaged and not just some of them and that will probably need further regulation,” she says.
“When does an issue get on the political agenda, when does it become political campaigning. We need to do it in a way that balances freedom of speech with protection of data, that side of it, and make sure it doesn’t create burdens that inhibit people who have the right to say things.”
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Giles Watling asks whether the £8m in impermissible loans from the Isle of Man came from Russia. Bassett says that the Electoral Commission can’t answer that question.
Collins asks about Banks’ claims, on TV over the weekend, that the EC hadn’t asked for records of Rock Holdings. “Unfortunately, that’s outside the jurisdiction of the UK, and our powers don’t allow us to request them,” Edwards says.
Bassett also emphasises, in contrast to some of Banks’ other claims on TV, that the Electoral Commission has already fined Leave.EU for offences around reporting staffing cost. “What I do know is that the staffing costs that Leave.EU reported were reported incorrectly,” Edwards adds.
Collins notes “he does seem to specialise in constructive – well, unconstructive – ambiguity”.
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Bassett reminds the committee that “we are limited in what we can say to you because we don’t want to prejudice any future investigations”, but hands over to Edwards to discuss the information the EC found to suggest criminality on the part of Leave.EU, resulting in a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation.
“What we did was ask Mr Banks for quite a lot of information … we looked at other sources of information and banking records. Having analysed that, we concluded that we suspect that Mr Banks was not the true source of either the £6m loans to Leave.Eu or £2m to Better for the Country. We think that one of the sources was Rock Holdings, which is not a permitted actor because it is based in the Isle of Man.
“Because of all this, we suspect that number of criminal offences may have been committed.
“Last week, we handed all our evidence to the NCA, and last week, we published a report explaining what we’d done.”
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Collins opens by asking how the Electoral Commission and the ICO work together. “We’ve been sharing our views around some of these areas. I think there’s a commonality of views around the need for regulation,” says Bassett.
Edwards adds that most of the work is about trying not to “tread on each others’ toes”.
With that, Denham and Dipple-Johnstone are done.
Next up, Claire Bassett, Bob Posner, and Louise Edwards of the Electoral Commission.
“If you’re targeting people on the basis of inferred data, that is personal data”, says Denham.
Collins notes that Facebook doesn’t treat it as such. Denham focuses on one specific type of inferred data, “lookalike audiences”, and says: “The use of lookalike audiences should be made transparent to individuals. They need to know that a political party is making use of lookalike audiences.”
Asked whether that is legal under GDPR, she says “we need to look at it in detail. I’m suggesting that the public is uncomfortable with lookalike audiences, and we need to be transparent.”
Pow asks what the investigation has highlighted to Denham.
She says it’s revealed “the disrespect for the personal data of voters and prospective voters. The model that is familiar to people in the commercial sector, behavioural targeting, has been transferred into the political arena. That’s why I called for an ethical pause. I don’t think we want to use the same model that sells us holidays and shoes and cars to engage with voters. I think people expect more than that.
Pow: “Lots of people are having personal data harvested about themselves that they’re probably quite unaware of.” She specifically asks about “inferred” data (when, for instance, Facebook surveils a users’ browsing and determines that they have an interest in, say, “homosexuality”), and Denham suggests that the approach to that data may be “wrong in the law”. She argues that such inferred data should be considered personal, and protected as such.
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O’Hara asks who should regulate about harm online, if internet companies can’t self-regulate. Denham says: “When it comes to internet harms regulation, there needs to be a code that’s backed with statute, extraterritorial reach, sanction – the powers the ICO has, those are the powers that a regulator needs to look at content and conduct online.
But: “I don’t think content and conduct online fits neatly in to any existing regulator.”
Conservative Rebecca Pow asks whether the ICO should just embed someone inside Facebook, which Denham says might be “uncomfortable for both sides”.
“I think inspection powers can give you a way in.”
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Could you envisage a greater breach than what we’ve witnessed with Cambridge Analytica, asks Brendan O’Hara, of the SNP.
“Can I imagine worse data crimes, a whole system breakdown? There could be some serious contraventions of the law involving police services, or health systems. But there was purposeful, intentional illegal misuse of personal data that was re-used in political campaigning, and I think that is very serious.”
O’Hara asks if this disregard is because of the disregard of tech companies for the ICO. “I think that the fines have not been significant enough, and the impact on their bottom line has not been significant enough,” Denham responds. “I think the public is waking up to the importance of data privacy in a way they haven’t in the past, and that will drive action.”
“The CEOs of other tech companies, Microsoft and Apple, have come forward with strong statements about supporting data privacy and digital ethics.”
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Who should regulate misinformation? “There could be a hybrid model between Ofcom and the ICO,” Denham suggests. “No country has tried this yet. It’s quite controversial and the need to balance freedom of expression with internet harms is hard. But the ICO has a lot of experience with regulating these large platforms. We have years of experience with right to be forgotten cases, which balance freedom of speech with privacy rights.
“Name a platform, they know us.”
Should the ICO be funded with a levy on tech companies? “I do think there is merit for the companies paying for some of the changes we need in the environment. Digital literacy and education, for instance, I do think there is a good idea for companies paying for it.
“A tech levy is a fine idea but how that is distributed is one for government.”
Giles Watling, Conservative, asks whether the ICO is “playing catchup” with large tech companies. Until GDPR came in, with larger sanctions, larger fines, and the ability to reach outside the UK and preserve data, “we couldn’t be as effective a regulator as we can be now”, Denham says.
“We’re never going to have the engineers, we’re never going to have thousands of experts, but we do have the power to compel response, to inspect, we have the power to look at the algorithms, so we have the ability to get in and look. And we can do it proactively and reactively. So the reboot of the law we got in May is really important.”
Watling asks whether companies just build in the assumption of a fine to their costs of doing business. Denham says that the 4% of turnover fines allowed by GDPR are powerful, but so too is the ability to demand a company stop processing personal data. That, she says, “will hit their bottom line”.
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GDPR led to a 100% increase in complaints, Denham says, but she notes that normal people rarely have the time or inclination to get involved in defending their rights. Most of the work is still done by journalists and civil society groups.
Clive Efford asks how this investigation ranks compares with previous investigations the ICO has run. Denham responds: “This investigation is unprecedented for our office, it’s unprecedented for any data protection office worldwide.
“But what’s at stake is the fundamentals of our democratic processes. People have to be able to trust the systems, so it’s important that we get to the bottom of this.
“And also that government and parliament take up some of the recommendations we’ve made at the policy level, that include a statutory code of practice for political campaigning.”
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Had Cambridge Analytica not already gone bust, it would have been issued “a large fine”, Denham says, because their information storage practices were so ineffectual.
“But this is not the end of our work,” Denham says. “You can see there are several strands that will take us into the future.”
The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data “was gathered and held illegally under UK law, so that’s our concern”, Denham says.
Across the whole system, she adds, the real focus of the report is the “lack of concern and disregard for the privacy and rights of UK voters”. She says that disregard comes from Facebook, data brokers and many others. We need to improve that “because it matters for our democratic process”.
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Damian Collins asks about who else may have copies of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook dataset. “Some are individuals, some are academic institutions […] about half a dozen,” Dipple-Johnstone says.
Collins asks how this can be the case, if Facebook forced people to delete the data. “We found problems with the signing of these authorisations, some of them weren’t signed at all,” Denham says. “We also found evidence that as recently as 2018, spring, some of the data was still there at Cambridge Analytica. So there’s evidence that the follow-up was less than robust, which is part of the reason we fined Facebook £500,000.”
Does Denham believe that Facebook’s brief attempt to investigate Cambridge Analytica itself – sending investigators to the company’s office before even the ICO was allowed in – harmed the data? “There is no evidence to suggest that”, Denham says.
On Twitter, meanwhile, Arron Banks has dismissed the ICO’s conclusions about data protection breaches by his companies, tweeting: “So what?”
Gosh we communicated with our supporters and offered them a 10% brexit discount after the vote ! So what ? https://t.co/OYIZaCOmh5
— Arron Banks (@Arron_banks) November 6, 2018
Banks’ tweet may be seen as evidence in favour of Paul Farrelly’s assertion that £60,000 fines are too small to have an effect.
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Labour’s Ian Lucas asks some pointed questions about the ICO taking Facebook’s testimony as fact. Facebook said it had found that Canadian data science outfit AggregateIQ used different email lists to those taken in the Cambridge Analytica breach, but Lucas wants to know if the ICO had independently verified that. It has not, Dipple-Johnstone says, in part because only Facebook has that data.
Ian Lucas asks who personally at Facebook dealt with the Cambridge Analytica breach. Dipple-Johnstone says the ICO has that information, but not to hand.
Lucas points out that, when Facebook first gave evidence to the committee, it didn’t mention that breach at all. He wants the information, he says, so that he can work out who knew what, when, and why the breach was hidden from parliament.
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“One simple question: should Mark Zuckerberg appear before this committee,” asks Conservative Julian Knight.
“We have dealt with headquarters,” Denham says. “We have more action, a better response, when we’re dealing with Mountain View, than when we’re dealing with local representatives.” [Mountain View is actually Google’s headquarters; Facebook is based nearby, in Menlo Park.]
“I think it would be very useful to have him appear… from our own experience, it’s been critical that we’re connecting with senior staff.
“It’s been critical that we have levers in to the highest levels, because that’s where the decisions are being made.”
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“We’ve heard evidence that there were staff who worked for both Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance,” Labour’s Jo Stevens asks. “Have you spoken to them?”
James Dipple-Johnstone says the ICO is interviewing former staff from many companies.
“Regulators need to look at the effectiveness of their processes,” Denham adds. “There’s a fundamental tension between the advertising business model of Facebook and fundamental rights like the protection of privacy. And that’s where we’re at now. It’s a big job on the part of regulators to ensure that the right rules are in place.”
“Would you put any personal information on a Facebook account?” Labour’s Clive Efford asks.
“I think Facebook has a long way to go to change practices to an extent that people have deep trust in the platform,” Denham says. “Social media is here to stay, but Facebook needs to significantly change their business model and practices to maintain trust.”
“We’ve seen some changes on the voluntary side to become more transparent,” she says, highlighting the company’s new rules about political adverts, “but they should be subject to stricter regulation and oversight. We issued the highest possible fine that we could impose for their role in Cambridge Analytica.”
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Ukip has also refused to speak with the ICO, Denham says. “It’s been frustrating that they’ve refused to cooperate with our investigation.”
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Cambridge Analytica’s Alexander Nix and Cambridge University’s Aleksandr Kogan both refused to appear in front of the ICO for an interview under caution. “Parliament has given us new powers that came into effect in April,” Denham says, but “one of the powers we may be coming back to parliament about is the ability to compel individuals to appear. That has frustrated our investigation.”
“We are looking at the entire structure for Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group,” adds Dipple-Johnstone, deputy commissioner.
Labour’s Paul Farrelly notes that the £60,000 fine against Eldon Insurance seems rather less than the potential revenue raised by the misuse of emails. “We have to look at other fines that we’ve issued,” Denham says, but notes that future fines could be significantly higher as investigations continue.
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The committee is up. Damian Collins, the chair, begins by running through the findings of the ICO, focusing on the fine levied against Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance.
“Does the ICO believe that the emails were also used to target adverts on Facebook?”, he asks. “It is possible those email addresses could have been used in other ways,” Denham responds, but notes that she has not yet investigated that possiblity.
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A breather from filleting the ICO’s report as we prepare for the DCMS to hear from the organisation directly.
If you want to watch along yourself, good news: the select committee is being broadcast live on Twitter, a first:
LIVE: What role can independent regulators have in regulating social media companies, keeping our data safe and advertising models transparent? We are questioning @ICOnews @ElectoralCommUK and @ASA_UK https://t.co/TpjDxeNwu6
— Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (@CommonsCMS) November 6, 2018
To tackle these issues, the ICO’s report calls for the creation of a statutory code of practice to regulate the use of personal information in political campaigns. The code would have legal force, under the 2018 Data Protection Act, and apply to all data controllers who process personal data for the purpose of political campaigning.
Crucially, the ICO hopes that such a rule set can be drawn up “before the next general election”, and is calling for input from almost everyone imaginable – “political parties, campaign groups, potential electoral candidates, data brokers, companies providing online marketing platforms, relevant regulators, thinktanks, interested academics, the general public and those representing the interests of the public”.
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In her blogpost announcing the report, the information commissioner says the report “is not the end”.
Some of the issues uncovered in our investigation are still ongoing or will require further investigation or action […] But it’s not just about enforcement action.
We are at a crossroads. Trust and confidence in the integrity of our democratic processes risks being disrupted because the average person has little idea of what is going on behind the scenes.
This must change. People can only make truly informed choices about who to vote for if they are sure those decisions have not been unduly influenced.
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As previously announced, the ICO has also sent formal warnings “to 11 political parties (Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru, DUP, Ulster Unionists, Social Democrat, Sinn Féin and Ukip) detailing the outcome of our investigation and the steps that needed to be taken. We required them to report on the actions taken within three months.”
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Leading credit rating agencies (CRAs) Experian, Equifax and Call Credit have also been issued with assessment notices and the ICO is in the process of conducting audits.
The regulator says the CRAs were already being examined in a separate project to assess the privacy issues raised by their work. That project has now been “expanded to include their activities in political processes”, and expects to report by the end of 2018.
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Cambridge Analytica has been ordered to “deal properly” with a request for personal data by the US citizen David Carroll. The ICO said it would pursue a criminal prosecution of the now-defunct company for failing to respond properly to their previous enforcement notice.
The ICO said it had identified serious breaches of data protection and would have issued a substantial fine if the company was not in administration.
Although they aren’t household names, Britain’s data brokers will also be facing uncomfortable investigations, with assessment notices issued to three of the largest: GB Group PLC, Acxiom Ltd and Data Locator Group Ltd. The information commissioner’s office said it had found no evidence the companies had broken the laws, but it is hoping to obtain “additional information about their practices”, and is now seeking to carry out audits.
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Arron Banks' Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance fined £135,000
Leave.EU and Arron Banks’s Eldon Insurance have been fined £60,000 each for serious breaches of the privacy and electronic communications regulations 2003 (PECR), the law which governs electronic marketing, over adverts sent to 2 million Leave.EU subscribers for Eldon’s insurance products, without consent, the report says.
A separate £15,000 fine has been levied against Leave.EU for another breach of email regulations in the opposite direction, sending 300,000 emails to Eldon customers with a Leave.EU newsletter.
Both fines are currently at the “notice of intent” stage, giving Banks’ organisations time to appeal or file countering evidence.
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Facebook referred to Irish DPA over surveillance concerns
The Information Commission will be referring Facebook to the Irish Data Protection Commission, which has authority over the social network under GDPR.
The body had already fined Facebook the maximum amount allowable under the previous regulations, £500,000, but it believes there are “outstanding issues” that still need to be addressed “about Facebook’s targeting functions and techniques used to monitor individuals’ browsing habits, interactions and behaviour across the internet and different devices.” But that is for the Irish DPA to rule on.
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From the ICO’s report:
“We may never know whether individuals were unknowingly influenced to vote a certain way in either the UK EU referendum or the in US election campaigns. But we do know that personal privacy rights have been compromised by a number of players and that the digital electoral ecosystem needs reform.”
“We have uncovered a disturbing disregard for voters’ personal privacy. Social media platforms, political parties, data brokers and credit reference agencies have started to question their own processes – sending ripples through the big data eco-system.”
More than two years after the Brexit referendum, and the regulators are finally starting to finish their investigations.
Today, the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee’s “fake news” inquiry will hear evidence from an assortment of officials, including the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, Claire Bassett, and the head of the Advertising Standards Authority, Guy Parker.
Kicking off the day are Denham and her deputy, James Dipple-Johnstone, who are expected to announce fines against Leave.EU backer Arron Banks for misuse of supporter data. They’ll be up at 10:30am.
But first, the information commissioner’s report on the use of data analytics in political campaigns has been published, 90 minutes early: it was due to be released after Denham’s appearance, but leaks have apparently pushed that forward.
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