Slashdot Mirror
UK Company Sold Workers' Secret Data
krou writes "The BBC is reporting that the Information Commissioner's Office has shut down a company in the UK for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act. It claims that the company, The Consulting Association in Droitwich, Worcs, ran a secret system that it repeatedly denied existed for 15 years, selling workers' confidential data, including union activities, to building firms, allowing potential employers to unlawfully vet job applicants. About 3,213 workers were in the database, and other information included data on personal relationships, political affiliations, and employment histories. More than 40 firms are believed to have used the service, paying a £3,000 annual fee, and each of them will be investigated, too." The article says that The Consulting Association faces a £5,000 fine — after pulling in £1.8 million over 15 years with its illegal blacklist.
It's kind of hard to say "continue, please" louder than by slapping such an enormous fine.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
getting 1.8 million for things you can also find on facebook! :D
surely the damage done over 15 years to the families of those not employed because of this illegal practice is much bigger than £1.8mln...
Can I put a spell on those who can't spell?
Your wheels are loose and they're losing their grip, good you're there.
How are the company's actions different than those of the government?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
This blacklist was specifically for the construction industry - for those who haven't RTFA. The terrible thing is that this list, and its sale for money, has been around for years and years. It's the industry's dirty little secret. It's only now they've computerised the records that they can use the Data Protection Act to prosecute. Sadly, I have no doubt that the information will live on somehow. All the major players have fingers in the pie and won't give it up, I think.
I have no
Are they also open to civil lawsuits from affected employees?
Anyone remember The Economic League? I'd be surprised if someone wasn't still maintaining it.
Just to point out that the original BBC article (when I submitted the story to /.) had a quote from the notes in the illegal database stating that someone was a member of the Communist Party, hence why I mentioned it contained political affiliations. Not sure why the BBC removed this, but just thought I'd mention it in case someone wonders why.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Finally we figure out the 4. ????? before 5. Profit!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Let me get this right:
British Employers are paranoid that potential employees are Communists or worse. They subscribe to a secret blacklist that potentials have no knowledge of or ability to refute allegations. Anyone blacklisted will not be employed, but the work still needs to be done.
So they draft in cheap labor from countries that didn't even exist twenty years ago. As these migrant workers aren't on the blacklist, they get cherry picked for work that local labor should have the same rights to apply for. The end result being the rise of local unemployment through no fault of the workers.
No wonder their economy is fucked.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
About 3,213 workers were in the database, and other information included data on personal relationships, political affiliations, and employment histories
And what's wrong with that? There are plenty of websites that track corporate political donations and rank companies as employers. Seems only fair.
...what a surprise.
The article does not say that the company is being fined £5000; it's the owner himself who faces prosecution, and hence a criminal record.
That's some spectacular grammar.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Charge them with 3213 instances and fine them per instance. The profit disappears and so does the motivation.
of story that just came out yesterday from Toronto. I guess this practice is more common than I thought. Spanning more than one industry for sure.
My penguin ate my sig
Or google search?
Ripoff Report?
about a million other blogs, sites etc,
The UK government needs to make an example of the users of the information not the supplier of the information otherwise database will be moved offshore to a country where it will be diplomatically difficult to eliminate. Users of the database will make payments though some scheme which is difficult to trace.
holy shit, I'm horny as all fucking hell! time to call up one of them craigslist hookers! damn i need some pussy
None of those are secret, like the blacklist the article is about. Compaies can refute claims made in blogs, etc.
That's "if" it actually happens.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Let's say that I run a company and we are absolutely committed to never, ever hiring an "ex-shop steward". Let's assume there isn't a service on the Internet where I can look up people to determine if they were ever involved in union leadership.
What am I to do? Well, I could just hire people in an uninformed way and hope for the best. Right?
Wrong. I would (obviously) do whatever it takes to make sure that prospective employees are not and never have been union-affiliated. Sure, this might result in some false positives. Who cares? The mission of a hiring manager is to weed out undesirable canadidates as quickly as possible. That means looking for any reason to not hire someone, without ever talking to them.
If you get 100 resumes to look through for a single position, what else do you do? So one more criteria gets added for "union-friendly" and it is just one more filter that resumes have to pass through. And interviews. And background checks. And reference checks.
Does anyone reslly believe that some secret database makes that much difference? I can assure you, if anything it would cut down the false positives. So which would you rather have, getting excluded from a job becaose of something real or getting excluded because of something that just-might-be? Because 99% of the time, you're getting excluded anyway. See, if I get 100 resumes for one position 99 of them must, by definition, be excluded. It is just a matter of how and for what reason.
I think the mods' problem with you is your erroneous extrapolation of a couple of (admittedly important) problems with particular unions to the conclusion that all unions are evil and must be destroyed wherever they are found.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Union leaders were taling all day about this.
There was legislation in place, that the government did not enact, because the existence of such black lists hasn't been probed at that point!
I am not really making this up. Check the BBC or other British media...
The current Labour government is a complete embarrassment to the notion of Democracy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... how would anybody would ever know? you should know that in the UK you have the right to see all the documentation about how a company reached the decision to hire a certain person to fill a position when you are applying for that position.
If they can't prove they did it based on objective criteria they would be in deep shit...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Google won't do the same thing once it is given control of all federal, state, and local data.
Of course they won't do the same thing.
We can be categorically assured that they won't do the same thing.
They definitely won't do the same thing.
And if they do the same thing they will pay a $7500 fine just as in the UK which will stop them from doing it again.
Besides government fines, the average person can withhold their custom from the companies that engaged in this behavior. Let them know why you will not do business with them.