Starmer-Evans party left hundreds of Subject Access Requests unanswered, many of them for more than a year when it is obliged to respond within an absolute maximum of three months
UK data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has censured the Labour Party for repeatedly ignoring enquiries from concerned members and ex-members submitting ‘Subject Access Requests’ (SARs) to find out what information Labour holds about them and for failing to action requests for information to be erased.
The ICO issued a formal reprimand after finding that the party had regularly ignored its obligations under data protect laws by leaving SAR emails unanswered. It had also not even read almost six hundred and fifty emails since 2021, when it stopped monitoring a party email inbox relating to data protection. The email address had previously been used for messages relating to the massive data breach Labour incurred when it outsourced data handling to a private company that lost control of the information to a criminal organisation.
Anyone can submit an SAR to an organisation requiring the disclosure of all personal information it holds on them, including copies of communications mentioning them. Labour has routinely ignored these, when the law requires all such emails to be answered within one month, or within three months in special circumstances.
The ICO found that Labour had ignored four out of five SAR requests and three out of five had not been answered after a year. In 2022, members were forced to take legal action even to try to find out what information the party had lost during the ‘ransomware’ attack.
The ICO report says that the party has since assigned three temporary members of staff to tackle the backlog. However, Skwawkbox is aware of requests that remain unanswered.
ICO Deputy Commissioner Stephen Bonner, said:
Being able to ask an organisation āwhat information do you hold on me?ā and āhow is it being used?ā is a fundamental right, which provides both transparency and accountability. It is vital that organisations do not underestimate the importance of responding to these requests on time.
The public need to fully trust that a political party will handle their data correctly and respect their information rights. We welcome news that the Labour Party has now cleared its backlog of SARs and implemented further measures to ensure people receive a prompt response going forward.
Labour’s right-wing party machine has previously illegally provided members’ data to third parties, including the campaigns of right-wing candidates in union elections. Members of Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign were also accused of hacking members’ data during the 2020 leadership election.
The issuing of a mere reprimand again highlights the toothlessness of the ICO when it comes to political parties. Breaches, recklessness and arrogance that could and arguably should lead to huge fines are routinely treated with a slap on the wrist.
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I wonder how many of those Labour HQ staff, involved in this dereliction of duty, are now sitting Labour MPs, elected at the recent GE.
Do they, now, sit grinning on the government benches, looking forward to their MPs salary, plus expenses, plus allowances – like their energy bills being paid from the public purse?
This may be a case for Parliamentary Standards!?
Subject Access Requests (SARs) are an exercise of your right to see or ‘access’ the personal information about you held by an organisation. Starmer’s settler-centrists don’t like them. That you believe you have a ‘right’ to access data about yourself fills them with DREAD: Authoritarian psychopaths like Starmer finds assertive behaviour like this suspicious and worrysome.
Starmer (& Co) despise anyone and everyone who asserts their natural or legislated rights.
He’s not ‘Labour’, not a lover of personal freedoms and not fit to be PM.
The ICO has the power to issue massive fines – but for some reason does not. I wonder why? It is sensitive (political) information held by an organisation headed by lawyers that really should know better! The Labour Party brags that it is strong on ‘law & order’ in public but does not give a phuq in reality, and nor does the MSM. No wonder people riot.
#TwoTierPolicing #GazaGenocide #CorruptBritain
What this?
An article about smarmerite labour being merely reprimanded for ignoring subject access requests (information)????
And no sign of the resident gobshite to spout the usual shite in defence of them?
The same gobshite who demands all sorts of answers but NEVER answers even the simplest and most innocuous of. questions himself?
Well done ICO, you’ve given the prick further encouragement to continue in that vein.
Trying to unsubscribe from receiving Labour party emails is another data problem Starmer’s crew clearly have no intention of resolving. Laws evidently don’t apply to them, but they’ll be only too keen to use them to beat the rest of us.
I see Liberty are going back to the High Court against Starmer’s government cos unsurprisingly he has no intention of dropping the appeal on Bravermanās unlawful anti-protest laws. The High Court ruled that the then-Home Secretary had acted unlawfully and the judges said āseriousā couldnāt mean āmore than minorā so the legislation should be quashed. This change had already been democratically rejected by Parliament … but we won’t be holding our breath expecting this government to give up āÆits illegal anti-protest powers easily.
Meanwhile, growing pressure to keep the Winter Fuel Allowance:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp81rmmgr56o.amp
You can read the ICO’s Reprimand in full here:
https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/reprimands/4030790/labour-party-reprimand-20240820.pdf
It includes the mitigation and the actions taken by the Labour Party that the ICO took into consideration when deliberating on this case.
A Reprimand is massively insufficient, SteveH.
Taking-up JulieT’s excellent point, if every ‘dearly departed’ former member who (like me) received email(s) and text(s) from the (pretend)Labour party during GE24 informed the ICO and complained appropriately, they’d realise that the party is guilty of far more than failing to apply minimum GDPR house-keeping and should demand that Labour states in writing that it has not supplied historical membership data to Mossad and/or related CIA partnership agencies (or sold it to 3rd parties for profit).
Starmer has never redeemed a pledge or promise in his life and isn’t to be trusted.
qwertboi – Oh dear š
If you have any evidence to support your ‘assertions’ then it is your civic duty to inform the ICO. Please be sure to let us all know how you get on.