Contrary to popular perception, Maltese political parties are not exempt from the Data Protection Act (DPA), and need the subjects’ consent in order to legally maintain their own databases of personal information about individuals, MaltaToday has learnt.
Just over a week after Labour leadership hopeful Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca argued against the “exemption” of political parties from data protection in an interview with sister newspaper Illum, sources close to the Data Protection Commission (DPC) exploded the myth that political parties are somehow “above the law”.
“Political parties, like the church and other non-commercial associations, may process personal data within certain parameters, but only regarding their own members, and even then only with the members’ active consent,” a Commission source told this newspaper.
The relevant section of Malta’s data protection law states that: “Any body of persons or other entity not being a commercial body or entity, with political, philosophical, religious or trade union objects may, in the course of its legitimate activities and with appropriate guarantees, process sensitive personal data concerning the members of the respective body or entity and such other persons who by reason of the objects of the body or entity have regular contact therewith: Provided that sensitive personal data may be provided to a third party only if the data subject explicitly consents thereto…” However, an earlier section in the same law also specifies constraints within which the “controller” of any database may operate. Foremost among these conditions is the consent of the data subject (see box below), as well as respect for the overriding principle of the right to privacy.

Parties in denial over abuse
Officially, both the Labour and Nationalist parties deny possessing illegal databases accrued from (among other sources) the activity of street-leaders appointed by the party to report on the presumed voting intentions of individual citizens in any locality.
And yet, the existence of such databases is casually mentioned in both the PN’s commissioned report into the 2004 MEP elections, and also in the more recent Labour report into the 2008 electoral defeat, published last month.
The latter even takes the MLP electoral office to task for failing to keep its database updated, claiming that as much as 20% of it may be “incorrect”.
Elsewhere, party insiders told MaltaToday that the Nationalist Party’s is by far the more accurate database, mainly because it was first compiled for information technology purposes by a private company during the 1980s, and constantly updated ever since.
However, this was denied yesterday by Henri Darmanin, director of the PN’s electoral office Elcom, who played down the widespread rumours of a “Big Brother” network of information gathering and processing systems.
“All we have is access to the electoral registry and the telephone directory,” he told MaltaToday. “I know there are people out there who think we can perform miracles, but at the end of the day we’re just trying to win an election by reaching out to the voters.”
Political parties are in fact entitled to view the electoral registry database under the terms of electoral law (as distinct from DPA), but their use of this information is governed by strict constraints, including the requirement to utilise information only for election purposes, and a prohibition on sharing the information with third parties.
And yet, the immediate aftermath of the March 8 elections suggests that the Nationalist party is privy to far more information about individual citizens than can be gleaned only from the electoral registry and phone book. On Sunday March 9 at 10.30am, before the counting had even begun, local columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia had already published information regarding the traditional voter preferences of those who did not vote.
According to this information, 52% of non-voters in the March 8 election were Nationalist, and 48% Labour. Caruana Galizia also claimed that: “Those who didn’t turn up to vote are ‘traditional’ supporters of both the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party. This information became available to both political parties over the course of the night as identity card records were checked...”

Checked against what? Certainly the electoral registry will not reveal whether a registered voter hails from a known Nationalist or Labour family. Besides, it is unclear how the Nationalist Party could have calculated the above statistics from a list of voters amounting to 7% of the voting population, between 11pm on Saturday and 10.30am the following day. Unless, that is, the party has access to a database whereby each individual voter’s political background can be guessed by simply inputting an ID number.

Cracking the code
MaltaToday is reliably informed that the system used to reach the above figures involves a computer programme whereby each inputted ID number would return a name, address, telephone number, and a code-number from 1-5. Each digit on the code represents a different degree of political affiliation, ranging from “Committed Nationalist” to “Committed Labour”, also including floating voters, third-party voters, etc.
In most cases, this information would be collected and updated without the knowledge, still less consent, of the individuals concerned: the vast majority of whom are not members of the Nationalist Party.
Asked to comment or the legality or otherwise of the above hypothetical scenario, sources close to the Data Protection Commissioner assured this newspaper that such a database – if it exists – would be “in clear breach of the Data Protection Act”.
Analysts also told MaltaToday that there is a very cogent reason why this practice is illegal. The biggest danger of such a system is that the information could be leaked to third parties such as commercial companies: for instance, employers who wish to screen their prospective employees’ political preferences before hiring them.
The DPC sources also suggested that discussions with the church and political parties regarding the so-called “exemption” clause are high on the Commission’s agenda. It is understood, however, that these discussions are currently on hold in view of the forthcoming administrative elections in both Nationalist and Labour Parties.

rvassallo@mediatoday.com