Every time I have a protracted ding-dong with a big organisation, I put in a request under data protection law to see what they’ve been saying about me behind my back.
Anyone can do this. If you get into a row with a charity after complaining they’ve put your direct debit up without telling you, for example, you could then do a subject access request (SAR), asking them to send you a copy of anything mentioning you in their files, and they would send you back loads of emails in which various people in their offices discussed how to handle your complaint.
The law requires them to do this, but it allows them to redact certain words, usually the names of those most involved in having you over, and other information they can argue is sensitive.
I’ve been sent a large file showing my emails to them and their emails to each other discussing my emails
So if you once complained to People for the Ethical Treatment of Hedgehogs, for example, and then submitted a SAR, you might get back an email trail showing that one office bod has said to another:
‘Hi ***, can you ask **** in customer relations what he wants to do about this ****** ** ********** who’s asking for us to cancel their direct debit and refund two months’ money. Honestly, some ******. We’re busting our ***** here trying to save these ******* hedgehogs and all they can do is **** *** ****. How was Friday by the way? Did you manage to *** ** **** ****** at Tina’s leaving do?’
And the reply might say: ‘What a ****! Leave it with me, I’ll speak to *****. He’ll probably put the refund through to keep the ****** ****** happy and stop them going to the *********. Omg I was so ****** Friday night I didn’t even know I’d ******* Nathan in accounts!’
They often leave in a bit of harmless detail and a few expendable names to make it look more convincing when they’ve basically gutted it.
Still, you’re able to piece together an idea of what they’ve been saying about you, even with all the gaps, not least because the gaps can be worked out and some words guessed at, judging by the length. And even if you can’t quite do anything about it, it’s all very entertaining to almost see what these normally po-faced do-gooders are saying to each other when they’re at their desks, dunking their Twixes in their teas and wishing the blasted public who pay their wages would go away and stop bothering them by asking for fair treatment.
And you could do this with your local council, if you argued over them not collecting your bins, or refusing to mend a pothole, or whatever.
As well as subject access under data protection – by which anyone can ask for emails about themselves – there is Freedom of Information (FOI), by which you can ask government departments for facts and figures, and that could be something useful like excess death figures, but people often don’t ask for anything that is useful or important.
When FOI first came out every hack at Westminster got busy putting in questions such as: ‘How many hot dinners have been served in the Department for Work and Pensions canteen in the past five years and what is the total cost of gravy?’ Or: ‘Please provide the total number of tyres changed on government Jaguars since records began.’ Or: ‘How many civil servants in the Department of Health have taken time off to have cosmetic dentistry in the past seven years?’
And government departments were ground to a halt and started claiming that the cost of doing some of these answers was ‘disproportionate’. Then we all got a bit bored with it. There’s only so much gravy you can ask about to make an amusing headline.
But I still do the SAR thing, because I’m neurotic, and I just put one into Alcoholics Anonymous, asking what information they hold on me following a three-year-long ding-dong in which I have complained about people being banned from meetings under the guise of a new ‘safeguarding’ policy.
The bods in head office, understandably, weren’t all that happy with me writing about this, because I’m supposed to say nothing publicly about any problems I witness under the ‘anonymity’ principle.
I think I just felt that as the thing is headed for the buffers anyway, if they start banning people, I’d nothing to lose by breaking my anonymity to try to save it.
I’ve now been sent a large file showing my emails to them and their emails to each other discussing my emails to them, and discussing my articles.
I expected a fair bit of redaction. But what I got included entire emails in which every single word was blacked out. Deary me, they really are cross. I cannot discern much from an entire page coloured black, except to guess that whatever it is the top bods have said about me in these particular exchanges, not one word of it is publishable.
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