Various people, including this writer, have reported Gerard Coyne’s illegal use of Labour Party data – which he admitted on air today – to the ICO with a request to investigate.
But the Labour Party also needs to investigate its own breach and make sure that appropate action is taken, so a clear message needs to be sent to the party’s General Secretary, Iain McNicol – with Jeremy Corbyn and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), so the strength of feeling among members and the desire for proper action is clearly communicated.
The email addresses for all three are below, along with a suggested template including some links to pertinent articles, but of course feel free to adapt or write your own.
Please drop a note in the comments of this article when you’ve done so, so the scale of the demand can be shown – McNicol hardly has a track record of appropriate action regarding the misdeeds of right-leaning Labour personnel, so pressure needs to be built and maintained:
Email addresses:
(IMPORTANT: put the ICO address in the ‘to’ field of your email along with McNicol’s as they will not take note of ‘cc’ emails)
iain_mcnicol@labour.org.uk
jeremy.corbyn.mp@parliament.uk
casework@ico.org.uk
Template:
Labour Data Protection Breach
Dear Iain,
My name is _____ and my Labour Party membership number is _____. I am concerned that the Labour Party have not handled my personal information correctly and that it has been passed to Gerard Coyne and his campaign team for their use in breach of the Data Protection Act.
Mr Coyne has admitted on the Pienaar’s Politics show that he had received data from Labour. He dismissed this as ‘agreed’ and ‘legitimate’, but neither Labour nor Mr Coyne have the right under the DPA to make any such agreement.
[Delete this paragraph if not applicable]
Although I am not a member of Unite and have never been, Mr Coyne has gained access to my contact details without my knowledge or permission and has used them to contact me about his campaign. This has caused me great concern.
Further information can be found via the links below:
https://skwawkbox.org/2017/04/02/gerard_coyne-admits-to-dpa-breach-on-live-national-radio/
https://skwawkbox.org/2017/04/01/exclusive-coynelabour-dpa-breach-involves-multiple-databases/
https://skwawkbox.org/2017/03/31/smoking-gun-coyne-campaign-is-using-illegally-obtained-owen-smith-data/
https://skwawkbox.org/2017/03/20/exclusive-coyne-campaign-emailing-non-unite-members-dpa-breach/
I am copying this email to the party leader’s office and the Information Commissioner and request that you investigate this breach fully and take every appropriate action to ensure that my data and those of other Labour members are handled in full compliance with the law and that those responsible for releasing my data wrongly are unable to do so again.
Please acknowledge receipt of this email, the action that will be taken and provide regular progress updates.
Yours faithfully,
etc.
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