Parties could break law with adverts on Facebook
Information Commissioner investigates how voters can be targeted by analysts using social media profiles
POLITICAL parties are facing an investigation into whether they are breaking the law by targeting voters with highly personalised adverts on Facebook.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will examine how political parties harvest information from people’s social media profiles then target them with political adverts.
It comes after allegations that Leave. EU, a group campaigning for Brexit during the EU referendum, failed to declare the use of Cambridge Analytica, a US company which specialises in analysing social media profiles.
Leave campaigners have said that Facebook proved to be a “gamechanger” during the EU referendum in helping target voters.
With polling day less than a month away, Elizabeth Denham, the UK Information Commissioner, said she wanted the new investigation to “shine the light” on how voters’ data from social media websites such as Facebook is used during political campaigns.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Media Show: “There have been some strong allegations made about the ability of companies to work with campaigns to microtarget individuals so using their digital trails online to be able to identify where their political leanings may be and target them in some way.”
The ICO is looking at activity undertaken during the EU referendum campaign as well as activity during the current General Election. She said: “We have met with all of the political parties just last week in London. We have refreshed our data protection guidance for political parties and campaigns.
“All of this is to remind them that the law applies to the collection of data even when we are talking about Facebook posts and Twitter feeds. Again, that is data.”
Ms Denham raised concerns that the use of people’s private data on Facebook and other social media websites to target them with advertising may be “offside the law”.
The ICO has the power to ask such companies what data they hold on British individuals and if questions are not answered voluntarily they can be compelled to do so and to set out how that information is used.
Ms Denham’s announcement came on the same day that Claire Bassett, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that her organisation was effectively powerless to stop an individual overseas or a foreign government from paying to target people in the UK during a campaign.
She said: “If something is happening outside of the borders of this country and is not part of any of the regime we are responsible for it is not something that we can cover within our regulation.” However, Ms Bassett said the Electoral Commission had no evidence of any “widespread activity” involving foreign interventions in campaigns.
Ms Bassett also said election rules needed to be updated and suggested that all social media posts promoted by political parties should be clearly identified in the same way as leaflets.
Leave.eu spokesman Andy Wigmore said the group “had nothing to hide... Cambridge Analytica did zero work for us”. He added: “This is just another example of political pressure from the Remainers to try and justify why they lost – they lost, get over it.”