We understand that an individual from Merseyside who calls himself "the_pervert" has claimed that the Information Commissioner's Office has found that Informed Consent is in breach of the Data Protection Act, in particular Principle 6.
This is a lie.
In June, the_pervert threatened to make an unfounded and malicious complaint about IC to the Information Commissioner's Office if we did not remove this post in which we objected to the use of an additional IC profile, "slave_master", to attack other members, including LadyPandoraCP.
the_pervert said: "Please remove this now and all relating material links or postings refering to this, or I will report your web site to the ICO"
As we did not submit to his demand, he acknowledged the baselessness of any complaint he might try to make, but stressed the inconvenience he hoped it would cause IC: "My intention is to contact the ICO and complain about your web site and the people who, own, manage, vet or train the staff who have access to this information. The complaint may well not be upheld, it will however put the ICO on notice of your actions in this matter and may give cause improve training for your staff and a CRB inspection of those within your organisation."
This threat was a surprising course of action given his simultaneous attempts to deny being the person who outted LadyPandoraCP to a local newspaper and council in an attempt to shut down her new BDSM venue.
Realising we were now the subject of lies and minformation by the_pervert, we published a description of how we knew the_pervert was guilty of creating "sock puppet" profiles to attack other members, including LadyPandoraCP, and at this point we removed his profile from IC and all the profile's text.
Good to his word, on this one issue, he began to carry out his threat to attempt to cause IC problems. He did not report IC to the Information Commissioner's Office, as there was nothing to report, but instead sent IC a Subject Access Request, which the Data Protection Act allows and which must be responded to.
IC replied by Royal Mail's recorded signed-for service. However, the_pervert did not sign for and accept the letter, and we have not been able to determine exactly what happened at that point. Instead, after also waiting for collection at the delivery office for several weeks, it was eventually returned to us, at IC's postal address, which was clearly written on the back of the envelope. Naturally, we have retained this letter, unopened, with Royal Mail's various postmarks and tracking codes.
At some point, the_pervert moved to the next step of his threat. Now he had something he felt he could complain about, and wrote to the Information Commissioner's Office claiming that we had not responded to his Subject Access Request, which would be a violation of the 6th data protection princple.
In September, the ICO wrote to Informed Consent, saying "from the information NAME REMOVED has provided there is a strong indication that IC has failed to comply with principle 6 in this case. This is because it would appear that they have failed to provide any response to NAME REMOVED's subject access request." So much for the_pervert's claim that the ICO has ruled against IC.
On receipt of this letter, we rang the ICO and explained that we still held the unsigned-for letter sent to the person claiming to be the_pervert, who had been banned from IC for misuse of the site. As with most public authorities, they were very helpful and added a note of the conversation to their record of the case.
In November, we received a second letter stating that the individual who was claiming to be the_pervert had made another complaint about the Subject Access Request, but that if we sent another copy of the original letter, that would be sufficient and they would consider the case closed. So we sent another copy of the original letter, again by Recorded Signed-for, and this time the_pervert signed-for it and then admitted receiving it, in an email.
We understand that he has now given up making these malicious and unfounded complaints, and is instead claiming that IC is in breach of the 6th principle of the Data Protection Act (not responding to Subject Access Requests) on various websites.
But as you can see, this is yet another of his malicious and unfounded allegations. Yet another of his dirty tricks campaigns against someone in the BDSM scene that is in his way.
(Following the original publication of this page, we wrote to the ICO again on the 24th November 2008, outlining his claims that the ICO had found IC to be in breach of 6th principle of the Data Protection Act. They replied on the 27th to confirm "it is my view that it is likely that IC has complied with the requirements of principle 6 in this case and the matter is therefore considered as closed.")
