Irish Political Candidates Given Advanced Warning

Irish politicians love to coo about our “knowledge economy” and how they see Ireland as some form of “digital hub”.

It probably used to help with votes. I wonder does it still?

Of course, as we all know all too well, the track record of Irish politicians and the digital world is far from stellar.

Fine Gael got their site hacked, The Greens spammed loads of bloggers and made some “interesting” statements via their Twitter account.

So now the Irish Data Protection Commissioner has felt the need to send a pre-emptive warning to all the Irish political parties (unfortunately he’ll have missed the independents!):

The Irish Examiner reports that the Data Protection Commissioner has written to political parties to warn them about texting and emailing people in the run-up to the general election. Commissioner Billy Hawkes has warned parties against using information from third parties to contact voters. The office said it had received numerous complaints during previous campaigns. According to the office of the DPC, “in many cases, the individual had no previous contact with the political party or candidate and was concerned at the manner in which their details were sourced. Subsequent investigations revealed that contact details were obtained from sources such as sports clubs, friends, colleagues and schools.”

Yeah – Irish political parties can be really trusted with email and the internet .. NOT!