A decision by the Data Protection Commissioner asking political parties to carry out a data cleaning exercise to ensure all e-mail addresses contained in their database complied with the law’s requirements was this morning confirmed by an Appeals’ Tribunal.
The two main political parties had received formal warning from the commissioner in July after e-mail users complained about the unsolicited e-mails they were receiving from both parties.
The Labour Party appealed the decision.
The tribunal concluded that the Commissioner’s decision was correct and according to law and stated that every directive given by him should be followed by the parties.
Data Protection Commissioner Joseph Ebejer had also lamented the reluctance by both parties to respond to his requests within a reasonable timeframe.
Labour had eventually said it was not aware of having e-mail addresses that did not pertain to party members, activists and other individuals who made contact with the PL, its officials or members of staff.
However, it promised to delete the e-mail addresses of the complainants and any others which were not provided by the individuals themselves.
The PN said the e-mail addresses were provided by party activists and it was impossible for them to determine which addresses were derived from which activist. However, it said it stopped the e-mails as soon as the first official complaint reached them.
In both cases, the commissioner said the parties provided no evidence that the data was collected with people’s consent.