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.
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!"
Most people working in the construction industry do not have a Facebook account. Most probably do not have a MySpace account either. They also probably don't have a lot of access to legal options either.
May the Maths Be with you!
Yup, 'cos most building workers have a facebook page.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Most people working in the construction industry do not have a Facebook account. Most probably do not have a MySpace account either. They also probably don't have a lot of access to legal options either.
How did you come to that conclusion?
You mean other than the fact that blacklists like that database are illegal?
...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.
You mean other than the fact that blacklists like that database are illegal?
If you rely on the law for your morals then you have no morals at all.
That's the infuriating aspect of this for some of us in the infosec world. This wasn't "selling private data", it was a good old-fashioned blacklist of "troublesome" employees who did annoying things like joining unions, complaining about health and safety violations (construction's very dangerous in the UK, I think it's ~100 deaths a year, and you can work out the ratio of deaths to maimings and career-ending injuries.) What they did was vile and evil, and the companies (huge mainstream FTSE-listed corporations, mostly) should be taken to the fucking cleaners as a clear sign that this sort of thing is illegal for good reasons, and will not be tolerated. However it's got FA to do with "leaking of personal data"; the headlines here, on the Beeb and even El Reg have been totally misleading.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
And you possibly think I care, how?
Charge them with 3213 instances and fine them per instance. The profit disappears and so does the motivation.
Cut out the 'in the UK bit'. A quick google gives me outdated figures for 2005/6:
UK: 59
US: 5702
jh
A more correct google gives:
UK: 59
US: 1186
jh
Highly variable, I suspect.
Illiterate undocumented immigrant getting paid 80 pence an hour to carry a hod? Probably not.
Skilled tradesman who happens to have political opinions pinker than his boss would like? Quite possibly(especially the web stuff).
Access to legal options, unfortunately, is very much a game for the wealthy; but the interwebs are pretty far downmarket these days.
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
Seems only fair.
Let us know when we get secret blacklists of employers so that we can badmouth them without risk of reprisal, and we'll call it even.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
That's "if" it actually happens.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Being on a tangent, safety on larger projects is (much) better managed.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Unionisation is a human right like free speech, telling someone he's not hired because he's a union member would deliver a 100% certain charge for discrimination.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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.
The database itself isn't illegal. What's illegal is not telling the subjects of its existence, not giving them the opportunity to have information contained in it corrected, and some of the recruitment decisions made on the basis of it.
Chances are, sharing this type of data would break various laws in the US, including those protecting workers' rights to unionize and whistleblower protection laws.
Individual workers could also sue the company for providing information that was prejudicial against them to prospective employers. When I was a manager, we couldn't even say *good* things about previous employees; if we got a call from a prospective employer checking an applicant's previous employment, all we could do was confirm (or fail to confirm) dates employed, job title, and pay information. We couldn't provide any information or answer any qualitative questions.
We could act as *personal* references, but if called in our capacity with the company, we couldn't even say "Wow, she was great, we really miss her!"
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
50% of my construction staff have Facebook. The other guy's fingers are too fat.
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.
The people targeted were union members, so they have access to lawyers. They're also in the UK, where fees are much more reasonable, and there's the Legal Aid system, for people that can't afford it.