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The Spanish Agency of Data Protection files the “undue use” of the electoral roll

[25/07/2007] The Agency of Data Protection has filed the presented charge of the municipal group of PSOE against the team of the Town Hall Government of Cádiz for using the data of the electoral roll of inhabitants for the mailing of letters, folders and other printed propoganda, among other subject matters, the General Plan of Urban Arrangement (PGOU).

The Agency estimates that “it has been accredited” that the mailing that the Town Hall made to its neighbors has to include them in its “urban competences,” for what one cannot understand that the using of the electoral roll of inhabitants for this means infinges on the current norm in matter of the protection of personal data.”

The socialist spokesman in the Town Hall, Rafael Román, and the councilwoman Carolina Camacho presented to the Agency of Data Protection eight mailings with each one of the charges in the envelopes appear the first names, last names, and domiciles of the recipients, among others that the two who placed the charges included, whereas there was not identification of the sender.

Inside of the envelopes were found two types of fliers that contained the information of the PGOU in whose heading was said, “Town Hall of Cádiz: Ideas for a city project, for a project of the future,” while in which the bottom part appeared, “Because your opinión counts, informe yourself and particípate,” and “Ideas for the historical helment” or “Ideas for the ouside.” Besides all of that, also appeared in the municipal motto, “yes, with the Town Hall of Cádiz.”

In the process of receiving the information by the Agency, the Town Hall ... said that the urban information sent to the people “forms part of the institutional activity of the Local Corporation in its competences,” so that it is already understood that it has to do with information related to the works of the PGOU “encouraging the institutional participation.”

Nevertheless, it recognizes that the data used in the mailings that were made is that which is found in the municipal electoral roll of inhabitants “and have been used for the exercise of functions and competences of the Town Hall and, further, for allowed uses like the right of information and participation of citizens in the local life.”

The fliers of the PGOU were sent to the neighbors of Cádiz of ages from 18 to 65 years from the 9th to 16th of January and the 5th to the 10th of March.

In its essentials of the law, the Agency refers to the law of Protection of Data of Personal Nature over the files or registers of data that will have as the end goal “the communication of the distinct organs of each public administration with the interested residents in the respective territories to the judicial-administrative relations derived of the respective competencies of the public administrations.”

The Agency of Data Protection remembers a sentence of the National Hearing of April 21, 2004, which considered that the electoral roll “is an element of communication between the organs of the public administrations and the citizens and its use will be determined in the compliance of the competences that the arrangement attributes to it.” This considers that the mailing of letters to neighbors, “always that which corresponds to a public activity of competition of local entities, cannot be considered as a treatment of data with an end goal that is incompatible with them for those that were obtained, but rather for the exercizing of the municipal competences.”

Against this resolution, that puts end to the administrative way, the socialists would be able to interpose resource of restoration before the director of the Spanish Agency of Data Protection in the period of a month, or a contentious–administrative resource in the National Hearing.

The socialists accused multiple times the Government team of having used the electoral roll to send electoral propoganda, something that form their point of view was not legitimate.

Román also presented during the electoral campaign a charge in the Provincial Police Station for the pamphlets that were realized in which they accused it of determined matters.

Source: www.diariodecadiz.es
Date: 25.07.2007

The Spanish Agency of Data Protection files the “undue use” of the electoral roll

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