You sign up to get a vaccine, and then the ruling party uses your contact details to send you campaign propaganda…
This is what was happening in Hungary’s election campaign earlier this year: the ruling party, Fidesz, took government data on citizens and used it to target voters.
There are at least two obvious problems with this.
First, as we outline in our new report, it undermines people’s privacy. It’s a complete betrayal of trust to take personal data for one purpose and then use it for another, particularly when it’s the government asking for the data, and the ruling party using it for political gain in data-driven campaigning.
People had handed over personal details to access public services – health care, tax benefits, and other services they had every right to receive. They didn’t sign up for Fidesz’s political messages.
It’s abuse of power, pure and simple.
Second, because the ruling party had access to this personal data while the opposition did not, it further tilted an already uneven playing field in favor of Fidesz during the elections.
It’s already well-known that in authoritarian Hungary, elections are unfair. This new study describes yet another method how.
The April 3 general elections, which unsurprisingly resulted in a fourth consecutive term for Fidesz and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, took place after 12 successive years of Orbán governments. For more than a decade, Fidesz has been capturing key institutions, like courts and the media, leaving the party able to blur the lines between the government’s resources (money and data) and its own.
The European Commission has just decided to stand firm on demanding rule-of-law reforms in Hungary before the EU member receives certain funds from Brussels. That’s good news, as I foreshadowed here last week.
Now, this new study on abuse of data for political purposes adds another layer. The EU has relatively good data protection rules, so we’re hopeful they will add this to their strengthening efforts to reverse Hungary’s authoritarian slide.