‘Forces’ may try to sway Irish polls, says Leo
UNNAMED ‘forces’ may seek to manipulate future Irish referendums and elections, the Taoiseach has warned.
Leo Varadkar was speaking in the wake of allegations that a UK firm misused the data of 50million Facebook users.
His warning comes as the Data Protection Bill, which will make the processing of personal data revealing political opinions lawful, is currently going through the Dáil.
Although only about 2,000 allegedly harvested Facebook accounts were based in the EU, the Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon is to probe Facebook’s ‘oversight’ of political targeting. And she is due to issue guidance to Irish social media users on data protection.
Her actions and Mr Varadkar’s comments follow a string of allegations against data firm Cambridge Analytica (CA).
The biggest of these is that it harvested personal details from more than 50million accounts without users’ permission.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Mr Varadkar said: ‘We have really strengthened the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner and increased the resources considerably and that is going to continue. So, I am confident that we have a robust data protection commission system in place.
However, he added: ‘I am always conscious that if a future referendum on Europe, for example, was held in Ireland, there may be forces who might take an interest in abusing people’s privacy and interfering in elections.
‘I don’t think we can be in any way complacent about the risks that are posed by people interfering in elections and interfering in referendums.’
When asked by the Irish Daily Mail, spokesmen for all the main political parties said their party had not used the services of CA.
A spokesperson for the Data Protection Commissioner said last night: ‘The issues in relation to profiling of Facebook users affected substantially US Facebook users.’
She added, however: ‘The microtargeting of social media users with political advertisements and sponsored stories remains an ongoing issue today.’