Conservative Party ‘racially profiled’ 10 million voters illegally before 2019 election
Questionable behaviour: the party that once put out the above as an election communication has been gathering information on UK voters by race and religion. What harm do you think they were going to do with it?
Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party bought tools to work out voters’ race and religion and used it for “racial and religious profiling” of 10 million people before the 2019 election, the Information Commissioner’s Office has revealed.
The Open Rights Group has said the data could have been used for “voter suppression techniques”, and referred to Tory Zac Goldsmith’s 2016 London Mayoral campaign, when he was criticised for ethnicity-targeted leaflets aimed at Hindu, Sikh and Tamil voters.
There is no evidence to suggest that the Tories used the information in any specific way in the 2019 election campaign.
The Open Rights Group has released this video, in which ICO staff explain that it was illegal to collect ethnicity data:
ICO confirms @Conservatives ILLEGALLY racially profiled 10 million people, at @commonsdcms hearing.
But @ICOnews still hasn't explained what else the parties are doing that has broke the law. That's why ORG supporters made an official complaint to ensure the ICO spell this out. pic.twitter.com/IFcyVKjtXD
— Open Rights Group (@OpenRightsGroup) January 26, 2021
Cat Smith, Labour’s shadow minister for voter engagement, said the revelation that the party in government – that is due to impose new, discriminatory voter identification laws – had been using illegal means to gather information is serious cause for alarm:
“The Conservative Party’s illegal misuse of ethnic race data – a characteristic protected by law – is deeply concerning.”
“With the government’s discriminatory Voter ID laws due to come into law this year, such racial profiling by the Party that is in charge of upholding our data protection laws raises serious alarm bells.”
Why would the Tories want to gather information that the law forbids them from taking, if not to give themselves an unfair electoral advantage?
What were they planning to do with it?
And why have they not even been punished?
We don’t know whose voter information received this “racial and religious profiling” treatment, so I think we all need to ask the Tories what they have been finding out about us.
We should all send a Subject Access Request to Conservative Central Office, demanding full disclosure of all information they have about us.
Source: Conservative Party ‘racially profiled’ 10 million voters | openDemocracy
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