Cable Forum - View Single Post - Liberal Democrats using personal data to profile every voter in UK

**Mick** · 05-10-2019, 21:44

I remember when this party had morals, you know like respect democratic principles, not make promises they were unable to keep and worst of all, respect peoples privacy.... Those days are clearly gone.

https://news.sky.com/story/the-lib-d...score-11828202

Quote:

The Liberal Democrats are profiling every voter in the country by rating their political preferences, Sky News can reveal.

This includes which party they will vote for in the next election and whether they are a Remainer or Leaver.

The percentage ratings - there are at least 42 in total, although the identity of only 37 are known - estimate whether someone voted Leave or Remain in the 2016 EU referendum and predict how they would vote if there was a second poll in 2019.

Other scored characteristics include "Likelihood of being a Labour voter in 2019", "Likelihood of being a core Lib Dem" and "Net difference in likelihood of voting for the Conservative or Brexit Party in 2019".

Matthew Rice, Scotland director of digital campaign organisation Open Rights Group, was assigned nine scores by the Liberal Democrats. In a possible 2019 election, it gave him a 15% chance of voting Liberal Democrat, a 22% chance of voting Brexit Party and a 20% chance of voting Conservative.

In a second EU referendum, Mr Rice was deemed 77% likely to vote Remain.

"The scores don't necessarily represent my values, but for all intents and purposes, for the Liberal Democrats, this is me," he told Sky News.

"They've decided where I sit on a political spectrum and in a general election they will define me based on these scores. That does feel quite intrusive. It doesn't feel reflective of what you would want from a democratic culture."

Data protection law prohibits processing of "special categories of personal data", including data on political affiliation, but grants political parties an exemption as long as there is "substantial public interest".

However, data protection experts warned that the Liberal Democrats' automated profiling fell into a legal grey area and could be challenged by the data watchdog, which is currently investigating political parties' use of data.