The voters on secret Sinn Féin database have right to know who is behind it
IT WILL not come as any great surprise to anyone who follows politics to know Sinn Féin invests heavily in new technology and social media. Its political rivals look on in envy at its online prowess.
But an unprecedented glimpse inside Sinn Féin’s secretive world of digital campaigning does raise some questions the party does not seem willing to answer.
A leaked tranche of internal party documents shows party members are being encouraged to “elicit” information from users of Facebook which is then being fed into a purpose-built online database to establish where they live so Sinn Féin representatives can knock on their door.
A digital training seminar given to party organisers last September stated the following: “Facebook will show you the name of the person and often roughly where they live. By engaging with them you may be able to elicit more specific information that will help you pinpoint them in the real-world.
“You can use the search function in the Abú system to find the person you have engaged with online, tag them as a social media engager and follow up with a canvass on their doorstep,” it added.
Sinn Féin members are not told to ask Facebook users for their home addresses but rather they are told to “elicit” or draw out information by interacting with them online. This information can then be used to locate someone in their electoral database without the user’s knowledge. Then, before you know it, a friendly Sinn Féin TD or activist is knocking on your door whether you wanted them to or not. Or at least this is what the training manual says they should do.
Despite members being encouraged to elicit personal details from Facebook users in the digital training seminar document, Sinn Féin says the “only information that representatives hold is information they are given by constituents”. They also insist they fully comply with Facebook’s terms of service.
“We are also fully compliant with regulations concerning the use of the electoral register for exclusively electoral purposes. The electoral register is made available for use to all elected representatives,” a spokesperson said.
The database referenced in the presentation, the Abú system, is a highly sophisticated canvassing tool developed specifically for Sinn Féin. A manual for Abú describes it as “Sinn Féin’s new online system for vote and canvass management and election analysis”. It feeds into Sinn Féin’s Green Register of voters whom they aim to “republicanise”.
Another internal document describes the Green Register as “the foundation on which all else is built”. It says activists should try turn voters into “likely supporters, to firm supporters and ultimately republicanise them”.
“This will be who will vote for us in any election” and “will ultimately be a key core for a unity referendum when it comes,” it adds. The aim of the Green Register is to hit the party’s “win number” of 30pc of the electorate.
But back to Abú system – the online database Sinn Féin members are encouraged to use to track down your home address if you say something positive about the party online. The online election tool can be accessed at Sfabu. com with a user name and password. There are also plans to develop the platform into an app that members could download to their phones.
The database comprises electoral register information given digitally to all TDs and a digitised version of the marked electoral register, which is provided to politicians only in paper form, with lines drawn through the names of people who voted.
The Abú training manual says the marked register is based on a “machine reading” of each document which is then fed into the system.
“This has been tested and is highly accurate – however, there are going to be errors particularly when the marked register itself is badly marked,” it adds.
Members are told the physical marked register is available on request to check any inaccuracies.
Once logged in, Sinn Féin members can search every registered voter in the country by name, address, electoral area and voting intentions. The information is updated from local canvasses.
Voters are marked as having ‘hard support’, ‘soft support’, ‘new soft support’, ‘strong opposition’ and so forth. Those who have voted for the party in the past are marked as ‘legacy’ supporters.
The information filed from canvasses can be examined and analysed to “improve
political and organisational decision making”.
The results of canvasses can then be compared and contrasted. The website domain for Abú is registered by Sinn Féin with an online hosting company based in Massachusetts in the US.
The party said all data on Abú was “stored on servers based in the EU and handled in accordance with GDPR”.
It would not say where exactly the data was stored within the EU or respond directly to questions about whether voter information, including names and addresses, was taken outside of Ireland by those who developed the online database.
It also would not say who developed the system.
But given that every single person registered to vote in this country is listed in the secret database, surely we have a right to know.
Activists should try to turn voters into supporters ‘and republicanise them’