{"id":100783,"date":"2017-03-07T14:54:39","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T14:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=100783"},"modified":"2017-03-07T14:54:39","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T14:54:39","slug":"inquiry-launched-into-social-data-use-in-political-campaigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/inquiry-launched-into-social-data-use-in-political-campaigns\/","title":{"rendered":"Inquiry launched into social data use in political campaigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following revelations last week that the US firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) allegedly consulted Leave.EU in the build up to the EU referendum, it\u2019s emerged that UK privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO), is launching an inquiry into the way that voters\u2019 personal data is being used in political campaigns.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The inquiry comes at a time when technological is being used to inform election strategies at a pace that electoral laws are struggling to keep up with. In the case of CA, the algorithms created by the company are used to create targeted political communications based on the tone of users\u2019 social media activity.<\/p>\n

While there were originally calls for Leave.EU to be investigated by the Electoral Commission for failing to declare the input of CA, which could amount to a donation in kind, the ICO is now investigating CA\u2019s role based on concerns around data protection. The ICO spokeswoman has confirmed:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are conducting a wide assessment of the data-protection risks arising from the use of data analytics, including for political purposes, and will be contacting a range of organisations\u2026We intend to publicise our findings later this year.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

While there are no laws against using third party data without consent in the US, European and UK law surrounding Facebook are the same as for other data types. However, as options do exist to opt out of Facebook and WhatsApp data being used for advertising purposes, it seems that any investigation will focus on how social data is used, as opposed to it being used per se.<\/p>\n

CA denies it has used Facebook activity to inform any UK or European projects they take part in. A spokesman for the company has confirmed \u2018\u2019we are in touch with the ICO, and are happy to demonstrate that we are completely compliant with UK and EU data law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following revelations last week that the US firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) allegedly consulted Leave.EU in the build up to the EU referendum, it\u2019s emerged that UK privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO), is launching …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":100793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1449],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100797,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100783\/revisions\/100797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}