Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling party Fidesz used citizens’ data from COVID-19 vaccine signups to spread Fidesz campaign messages before Hungary’s election in April 2022, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
Not only was data from vaccine jabs used to help Fidesz, but also data from tax benefits applications and association membership registrations. This violates privacy rights, said the report — and blurs the line between the ruling party and government resources in Hungary, which has repeatedly been warned by the EU to clean up its act regarding the rule of law.
“Using people’s personal data collected so they could access public services to bombard them with political campaign messages is a betrayal of trust and an abuse of power,” said Deborah Brown, senior technology researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The Hungarian government should stop exploiting personal data for political campaigns and guarantee a level-playing field for elections,” she added.
According to the report, people who submitted their personal data to a government-run website to register for the COVID-19 vaccine received political messages intended to influence the election in support of the ruling party.
Orbán won a fourth consecutive term as prime minister in the April 2022 election, but international observers said the conditions under which the general election took place were not fair.
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