Deutsche Post has rejected criticism of commercial transfer of customer data to CDU and FDP in Bundestag election campaign. The subsidiary company Deutsche Post Direkt GmbH stores and processing personal data with strict adherence to Federal Privacy Act, a spokesman of company shared. It is under supervision of Federal Commissioner for data protection and has been “regularly reviewed over years”.
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The CDU and FDP said that y had acted in accordance with data protection law and used only anonymised data; A personal reference was not produced.
Previously, picture on Sunday had reported that CDU and FDP had paid a five-digit amount for road-specific analyses to post-subsidiary company in Bundestag election campaign 2017. According to this, CDU had set up its doorstep campaign on this data, which FDP sent to certain target groups on this basis. Both parties have confirmed corresponding contracts with post subsidiary, writes newspaper. The SPD, Greens, left and AfD have refore not worked toger with Swiss post.
“FDP-Affine electorate”
According to CDU headquarters, Christian Democrats commissioned a mass mailing at post office during election campaign. No data were transmitted to CDU or purchased through individual households. For doorstep campaign, Swiss Post delivered a statistical “CDU election probability” for road sections. To do this, you have access to a map view, access to database was terminated after election.
The parliamentary director of FDP Bundestag group, Marco Buschmann, wrote on Facebook that data acquired by Swiss Post had been completely anonymised and processed in accordance with data protection law. As a data protection party, it was ensured that no personal data had been used. Moreover, data provided only a probability value “to meet a possible FDP-affine voter”.
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The network politician Anke Domscheit-Berg ( left) said picture on Sunday: “A transfer of this private data must be prohibited without express consent.” The Hamburg data Protection commissioner Johannes Caspar asked for a re-evaluation of microtargeting in United States after events around Facebook, with which selective groups of voters can be addressed via statistical procedures. Intransparent procedures should not help to manipulate will of electorate.
Bank behaviour, purchasing power, passenger cars
The picture on Sunday had been quoted from an internal brochure of Post, which mentions “more than one billion individual information”. For about 20 million houses with around 34 million households in Germany, purchasing power, banking behaviour, gender, age, education, housing situation, family structure, residential environment and car ownership could be broken down. According to ir own data, Swiss Post also buys statistical data from public authorities such as Federal motor vehicle and Land Registry.
Trading in data and addresses is a lucrative business. Companies and parties have been using such data for a long time in order to be able to advertise more accurately. Facebook is currently under pressure because British company Cambridge Analytica has been able to use data from 50 million users in an unfair manner to support US President Donald Trump’s election campaign.
According to post-spokesman, data directly collected by Swiss Post does not refer to individual households, but to a so-called micro-cell on average 6.6 households. No personal data, but statistical probability values would be displayed. The data would be rented and not sold – a direct transmission of address data to advertisers is excluded. Data protection regulations would be implemented, and encryption technology would be used for data transmission.
