E-mails are wonderful things. The vast volume of correspondence inane and inspired which they make possible is a phenomenon of our age. So are the disastrous situations they also make possible. We need new names for new things and the misdirected e-mail has become known as a PBO.
Paul Borg Olivier, PN Secretary General inadvertently copied his less than correct request to heads of Government Departments to his counterpart in the Labour Party. PBO had asked for complaints made to government departments to be relayed to him ostensibly to be serviced via the PN favour/obligation networks.
Jason Micallef PL Secretary General at the time found the temptation to publish the dropping of this giant brick simply irresistible. The PBO was born.
Now there may be a small section of us who are so meticulous and diligent that they feel themselves to be immune from such disasters. The rest should know themselves to be just as fallible as poor old PBO himself. We have all enjoyed his discomfiture nonetheless. His nearest and dearest must have first squirmed by proxy and then squealed in delight.
Had he sent Jason Micallef a love letter in error or an order for a new pair of long johns, it would have been merely amusing and we may never have come to know of it. In this case he sent to the worst possible choice of Jason in his bulging address box precisely the sort of missive he should have kept under wraps.
Making no concession on the basis of our own potential to press Send too quickly, we all took PBO a notch or two down in our estimation of him. The brand new Sec Gen of the Nationalist Party who is expected to be as sharp as a knife turned out to be a duffer just like us and we found that unforgivable. It could have come to pass in no other way.
In order to exploit the poor man’s embarrassment as far as humanly possible the Labour Party reported the matter to the Data Protection Commissioner. Now they too have egg on their faces.
The Data Protection Commissioner has ruled that there had been no data protection infringement he could condemn. How could it be otherwise? PBO was asking for data in the errant e-mail. He seemed to be complaining that such data had not been made available before and that he, the new broom sweeping clean the cobwebbed crannies of the PN machinery, was about to make sure that things changed.
In fact the publication of his e-mail put paid to such plans. The Labour Party effectively made sure that no data protection violations would take place by exposing the whole show a little too soon.
Imagine if they had waited a little longer and been copied long lists of complaints in a far more disastrous ‘Reply Al’l emitted by some over-obedient public servant. At that point the scandal caused by the revelation of the PN’s intention to become privy to confidential correspondence between citizens and their government would have ballooned into the scandal of the century. Thousands of people of every shape, size and hue would be wondering whether their communications with authority had been relayed to the PN.
As things stand there is no evidence that anything of the sort had ever taken place. If at all, there is substantial circumstantial evidence that it had not yet taken place.
Worse still for the PL, they have allowed the PN to crow over them as PBO is acquitted of data protection violations by the Data Protection Commissioner. As far as the inattentive masses are concerned the PL is wrong and the PN’s innocence has been vindicated.
Innocence my eye, the PN has been caught with its pants down. No, PBO has been mooning all over the internet. It was a politically indecent proposal. It was indiscrete of PBO to make such an improper suggestion in writing. The fact that he sent it to the wrong address is an unbelievably fortunate accident displaying beyond all doubt what could be going on behind the scenes. Those who would instinctively refuse to believe allegations of such misbehaviour cannot but accept that the PN want to know everything about everyone.
The e-mail also provides incontrovertible proof of the confusion of ideas in the minds of the party leadership which is unable to maintain a clear and proper separation between party and government.
When the infamous PBO’d message became available for all to read on the PL website I rejoiced. Evidence of the mental confusion abovementioned had landed on my desk in fragments whispers and secondhand reports. This was unassailable proof. It felt like winning the lottery. It still does.
No matter what the Data Protection Commissioner has enunciated the facts remain clear for all to see if they want to. The point is not to demonstrate any intrinsic evil of the PN but to make us aware of the danger to us all when the government, the fate and the party become rolled up into one vast mish mash.
From my point of view the PL’s present moral outrage is not enough to reassure me that it would not be similarly tempted once in office. A brief institutional skirmish for the benefit of the press is simply not enough. We need to have systems in place to prevent such occurrences.
No evidence was brought before the Data Protection Commissioner that any data had been passed in this case but there is more than a slight indication that it does pass and is used and abused at election time. Has the Data Protection Commissioner carried out any investigation of possible abuses in the 2008 and 2009 elections? If no protected data is passed, how is it that many people receive electoral propaganda addressed to them in relation to their occupation?
In one local council election a Nationalist acquaintance was bitterly disappointed that AD had not fielded a candidate because he was determined vote and not to vote PN. He had filed an application with some Government Department and had received phone calls from a number of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries advising him that his request had come before them and that they had approved it. The display of clientelism had disgusted him.
This sort of thing has always happened and will always happen to some extent. In an age of internet communication and data processing at the speed of light, the potential for abuse is enormously magnified. In this tiny constituency where Big Brother has always been watching, we need permanent and very effective structures to counter its effect. We need to know that the Data Protection Commissioner can and does take the initiative to act as our bulwark against the systematic invasion of citizens’ privacy; that he can be an effective safeguard against abuse especially when it may distort an electoral result.
Fast forward to the next Labour government: the Nationalist opposition is very capably complaining of data abuse by the Government and the PL. Is it hard to foretell a tit for tat response quoting the PN’s previous offences? Where does that leave the ordinary citizen?
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