Sinn Féin should ‘proactively’ draw voters’ attention to the existence of its Abú electoral database in its canvassing material, the data watchdog says.
The Data Protection Commission found Sinn Féin is the only Irish political party that “keeps a database that encompasses electors/voters data from all constituencies across the State”.
While several other parties use data from the register of electors, Sinn Féin is the only party with a ‘bespoke database’ that also contains data obtained from the party’s canvassing efforts.
There was controversy over the database - which records names, addresses and potential voting intentions of people all across Ireland - following media reports earlier this year.
There was further controversy when it emerged several political parties have previously had canvassers pose as opinion pollers.
In response, Data Protection Commissioner contacted Sinn Féin and all other political parties about the issue of data protection.
In their report, the DPC says Sinn Féin’s database includes canvass data - such as info about whether a vote shows ‘support’ or ‘opposition’ to the party, or whether they’re likely to be transfer-friendly.
The database is said to contain political opinions of around 5.85% of voters in the database, with no information about the likely voting intentions of the vast majority of voters.
Access to the database is “strictly limited” to trained users, with the data stored on a server in Frankfurt in Germany.
Based on its findings, the DPC says it hasn't made any recommendations to Sinn Féin about the legal basis of the database.
However, it does recommend that Sinn Féin be more transparent about the database in their canvassing literature.
The DPC said: “The DPC recommends that from now on Sinn Féin proactively draw voters/electors attention to the existence of the Abú database and the associated privacy policy by way of notice on all canvassing and electioneering literature.
“This should continue as standard practice for as long as the Abú database continues to exist.”
Sinn Féin has previously defended their database, saying it's just a digital version of work political parties have always done in determining voters' intentions in individual constituencies.
Meanwhile, the report found that seven political parties had conducted market research or opinion polling "through the deployment of resources from their own membership, supporters or activists".
However, just one of the parties - Aontú - processed personal data as part of the process, and that party "overtly" told participants that data was being processed by Aontú.
The report also notes that Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin are the only two parties required to have data protection officers as they hold data including political opinions of 30,000 or more voters.
Both do have officers appointed - although the report notes delays in contact details of the officers being communicated to the DPC (three months late for Fianna Fáil, and nearly three years late for Sinn Féin).
Meanwhile, the DPC is also recommending that several political parties update their privacy policies when it comes to the use of the Register of Electors and Marked Electoral Register.
