A leaked internal Labour Party report has hit the headlines (archive) because of lurid statements allegedly made by staff. What has been missed however, receiving barely any coverage, is an apparent admission that, using a secret deal with Facebook and Twitter, the Labour Party has been running automated surveillance on its own members. If true, this is manifestly unlawful – each member affected would almost certainly have a valid claim in damages under Data Protection legislation.

[UPDATE 21 April 2020, 18:10 BST – Have received a response from Twitter, below]

In the furore about the leaked Labour report, many commentators have focused on the supposedly racist, sexist, and / or ableist remarks. There is also the apparent dishonest treacherous plotting. It is important to remember of course that this report was produced by a bitterly infighting party and its contents are disputed. Former staff who were criticised claim that accusations about their conduct were never put to them.

MHN has a copy of the report and leaving all that aside however, this passage leaps out –

It is worth turning to the Data Protection Principles set out in the Data Protection Act 1998, which was in force at the time (replaced by the EU General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018 in May 2018). The principles were set out in section 4 (archive) and Schedule 1 (archive).

Of especial relevance, these principles included processing data, “fairly”, holding data that was “not excessive”. Fairness usually means notifying members of the way their data will be used. A quick glance at Labour’s current terms on its, ‘Join’ page does say that email addresses will be used to contact members. It says nothing about consenting to Orwellian real time monitoring for wrongthink.

Furthermore, on the topic of fairness, it is alleged that the Governance and Legal Unit deliberately hid aspects of the project from the Labour Party’s supreme body, the NEC. It is alleged that Sam Matthews, a Compliance Officer, stated – “we don’t want the NEC to have much of an idea how many there are to review (we’re worried they’ll get scared)”.

Volunteers were used to review the data produced by the automated scan, including 10 Labour Students. Two were from pro-remain group, “Britain Stronger in Europe”.

The program would scan for juxtapositions of wrong or abusive terms and the Twitter handles of Labour MPs. That is, for tweets likely to be rude tweets directed at Labour MPs. However, it only included a subset of Labour MPs. Some MPs were not included for protection. Whilst the report alleges that this was factional, the reason does not really matter. Personal data linked to members and MPs was apparently processed in a manifestly unfair way, with oversight and disclosure intentionally thwarted.

Furthermore, political speech was considered, ‘Sensitive Personal Data’ under s2 (b) of the 1998 Act. This is now, ‘Special Category Data’ under the 2018 legislation. Worse, Twitter at the time appears to have rules against using its systems for surveillance. It even blogged about the matter on 22 November 2016, “Developer Policies to Protect People’s Voices on Twitter” (archive). In the absence of a special exception for Labour, the Party was engaging in unauthorised use of personal data.

This is probably the most sinister thing I have ever seen ever out of Big Tech. A major political Party, conspiring with the world’s two largest social media companies, to scan its members feeds and expel or suspend them for “incorrect” views. I would say it should be against the law but of course it is. Anyone affected by this has the right to sue Labour for injury to feelings. That even includes people not suspended. Even the author apparently called it a, “stasi” system.

As readers may be aware, I am a law graduate who has passed the solicitor’s exams, (LPC) and although I have not sought to be admitted as a solicitor by doing a training contract, I have about 10 years’ experience as a McKenzie Friend. Former MP John Hemming has praised me in the media for winning his libel cases –

Any current or former Labour member who wants pro-bono advice on this, please do feel free to email me. These people deserve to be sued.

This is not the only matter for which I have recently written about Twitter. The company’s incompetence and arrogance is beyond belief. It is currently failing to enforce its rules in relation to a vulnerable child abuse victim. A court has restrained a woman called Esther Baker for using Twitter to stalk the child abuse victim who was raped by a Catholic Priest. Whilst the court has found Baker engaged in targeted harassment using their platform, Twitter have yet to ban her or even demand the removal of the tweets the court found were stalking.

That matter has been drawn to the attention of Vijaya Gadde and Del Harvey (Alison Shea). However, they have missed their own deadline to respond. Substantial further litigation is anticipated.

In terms of this story, a draft has been put to Twitter, Facebook and the Labour Party. I have not been able to obtain contact details for Richard Shakespeare. I received no reply from any of them by the deadline, but after publication received the following from Twitter –

“Twitter disputes the factual characterizations and legal conclusions in your email and your draft blog post. We reserve all rights and defenses.”

A difficulty with this is that I am not sure which specific facts or conclusions are disputed, nor why. It reads like an attempt at intimidation by a legal intern. I keep giving them a day to respond (and an offer of more time) and they keep replying with things like this after the deadline. I wrote back by return, asking for details of what specific facts were disputed.

I asked –

(1) Are there any errors of fact in this article? If so, please set them out clearly.

Other than Twitter’s inadequate reply above, there was no reply and no denial.

(2) Did Facebook / Twitter have an agreement with Labour permitting the use of its API for surveillance?

Other than Twitter’s inadequate reply above, there was no reply and no denial.

(3) If yes, please confirm Labour’s Developer account has been permanently suspended or explain why not?

Other than Twitter’s inadequate reply above, there was no reply and no denial.

(4) If no, please confirm Labour have been reported to the ICO by Facebook / Twitter?

Other than Twitter’s inadequate reply above, there was no reply and no denial.

Finally, immediately on publication of this article, I reported the Labour Party, Facebook and Twitter to the Information Commissioner. Before publishing this article, MHN considered the public interest, the GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Editors’ Code of Practice.