Tuesday 18 November 2008

Minor BNP Data Protection issue?

Er ... whoops!

Entire BNP membership list goes online
Posted by Antifascist*

Before reading this, you should appreciate that there are very strict limitations on what we are allowed to print and we intend to stay strictly within the law in the comments that we allow.

Having said all that, this breach of data security is startlingly bad for the BNP, not simply for the fact that the party has lost data - almost everyone seems to have managed to do that recently - but for the nature of that information.

Not only does the data, now available online, include the entire membership list with full names (and former names where there have been changes for any reason), addresses, contact numbers, email addresses and in many cases the member's age, particularly where those members are under eighteen. Yes, that's right. This list includes members as young as fourteen, male and female. Where a family membership is bought and paid for, the whole family is listed.

As if this isn't bad enough, the notes that are attached to many of the entries leave a lot of the members open to difficulties in their jobs, some of them being in the armed forces or the police and the BNP too - an illegal combination, and where not illegal, frequently frowned upon. Other members are noted as construction managers, receptionists, district nurses, lay preachers, police officers, company directors and teachers among many others.

Like this wasn't enough, the BNP has also listed hobbies or interests where for some reason they are deemed relevant. Thus we have short-wave radio hams, amateur historians, pagans, line-dancers and even a witch (male).


*The irony of some left-wing communitarian troglodyte claiming to be anti-fascist did not elude me.

7 comments:

Hacked Off said...

Couldn't happen to nicer people.

The Penguin

Anonymous said...

I'd agree wirth you there, except for this: "This list includes members as young as fourteen, male and female. Where a family membership is bought and paid for, the whole family is listed."

Hacked Off said...

Was it not a 14 year old who has just been jailed for a pathetically short time for attacking some bloke with a broken bottle because he refused to buy the feral youth beer and fags?

How old was the girl friend of Jason Barker who was unable to bring herself to report the abuse of Peter Connolly - 15?

You have to wonder about people who think it normal to sign up their entire family to a political party of any ilk, let alone one as noxious as the BNP.

The Penguin

Anonymous said...

Surely it should not be illegal to be a member of a legitimate political party even if they are a bunch of cunts. Personally i cant see that this attitude is very "Libertarian" in nature.

Obnoxio The Clown said...

@anonymous, 17:53 -- not my post, I quoted it from the source in the link.

I'm working on something related to what you're saying now.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but if I'm going to condemn kids, it's for what they do - not for what their parents may have signed them up to...

Thatcher's Child said...

There is a train of thought that goes 'this is the best thing that could have happened to the BNP.'

Suddenly, there is proof that there are many people, all over the country who are willing to join this party. It isn't about sad old National Front people from Yorkshire anymore. These people only have one head and live in your street.

It is also different to the main parties, while being comfortably similar to an older time.

I hope I'm wrong, but next year, their membership will have doubled!