Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Leaked membership list causes outrage

The complete membership list of the far right British National Party has been leaked on to the internet, the party hierarchy are now calling for a police investigation.

Curly now has a copy of the list in his shredder but is not prepared to divulge where he downloaded it from or provide a link, there is currently a High Court injunction preventing publication of the list which is now over one year old. The list contains names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses as well as references to family members.

The search that I did revealed that the BNP is very active in South Shields and Jarrow with, in some cases, whole families joining the party, in some areas it has far more members than the main stream parties which is very worrying. The biggest shock is that a former South Shields Progressive councillor is openly letting the world know that he is a member of this organisation, and he even allows details of his past membership of South Tyneside Council to be shown.

I cannot condone the actions of those who have stolen these private details and made them publicly available, there are some people who may end up highly embarrassed and others who may even lose their jobs (but perhaps they knew that anyway); as a data breach it is as bad as anything which has happened under the watch of this Labour government, and one must seriously question the way that the BNP has looked after the privacy of personal details belonging to their members.

In this country we ought to value our privacy more and accept the fact that we live in an open democracy which still allows us the freedom and liberty to pick and choose which political parties we can join, even if the policies are outlandish, statist, protectionist, and racist.

Update

Mark Tran at The Grauniad agrees along with Sir Michael White too.

Serves them right, some may say. My instinct is that we should be as offended on their behalf as we would be about any breach of personal privacy on this scale.

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