BNP membership list leaker gets off easy

Sep 2, 2009 13:41 GMT  ·  By

A Nottingham court decided to fine a former BNP senior official with £200 ($323) for leaking the political party's membership list onto the Internet last year. The man's action is likely to have indirectly caused 160 attacks on BNP members and/or their properties.

The British National Party (BNP) is a controversial political party in the UK, considered by many as being extremist and anti-semitic. In November 2008, a list containing the personal information of over 10,000 BNP members appeared on blogs and file sharing networks, striking panic amongst many of them.

The people whose information was exposed started fearing for their wellbeing and their families’, as the party is used to receiving death threats because of its political views. According to Times Online, the subsequent investigation pointed to Matt Single, 37, BNP’s former security chief, and his wife, Sadie Graham, 30, as being responsible for the incident.

The charges against Ms. Graham were dropped, but Single pleaded guilty and received a fine of £200. He was also ordered to pay another £100 ($160) in prosecution costs, despite the investigation into the incident costing a total of £50,000. The maximum penalty could have been £5,000, but the court explained the low fine though the fact that Mr. Single currently lives on state benefits.

It appears that people's fears at the time of the leak were well justified, because since then, the police have received 160 complaints regarding attacks on BNP members. "There have been some real victims in this case. People had their homes attacked and some people have lost their jobs," commented John Walker, a spokesman for the political party.

Such is the case of Steve Bettley, a former police constable, who was fired for misconduct. The British police force specifically prohibits officers from being BNP members. Other professions in the UK prohibit any involvement in political party activities.

"We may not all agree with their political point of view, but that doesn't make it right to leak their personal private information onto the internet. […] It seems somehow wrong that the maximum penalty for this dangerous data leak would have been a £5,000 fine - let alone the punishment that was ultimately meted out," concluded Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos.