Join the fight to hold Arron Banks and his companies to account. 

Help us in our legal fight to determine whether UK citizens' data was off-shored to be used without people's consent. Please contribute now and most importantly let people know about our action by sharing this page with your friends, family and on social media. 

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Elections and data are intimately linked. The latter is now the prime currency of democracy. Data on you offers a deep and thorough snapshot of who you are, what you like and how you feel. There are rightfully laws that dictate how your data can be held, used and stored and we're trying to determine whether personal and private data of UK citizens and residents was illegally off-shored to the United States.

It's up to us to hold powerful actors to account and remind them that nobody is above the law.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Last year Brittany Kaiser, former Cambridge Analytica employee, said while giving testimony to the DCMS select committee that Eldon Insurance and Big Data Dolphins were storing and using British citizen’s data in Mississippi. This was further backed up by research done by Dr. Emma Briant, who brought forward audio recordings of Andy Wigmore (Director of Communications for Leave.EU) where Mr. Wigmore suggests UK citizens’ data was illegally stored in Mississippi.

In response to this revelation, Fair Vote UK immediately secured legal counsel in Mississippi and pursued a preservation order over this data so that the companies in question could not destroy or tamper with it. We were - at the time - granted a temporary injunction. I went to Mississippi to testify in the hope of being granted a permanent injunction. 

The Information Commissioner’s Office wrote a letter strongly supporting Fair Vote UK’s pursuit of this data, and stated its desire to investigate the data in question: “Preservation and access to this data is of significant importance to the ICO’s current investigation. For this reason, and in light of potential uncertainty as to whether the data will remain preserved beyond the hearing on 5 June 2018, the ICO lends its support to Fair Vote Project’s claim for permanent injunctive relief.”

We were unfortunately unsuccessful in our first attempt, with the court noting certain criteria it would like us to meet. We then met that criteria, and have now refiled our motion. Unsurprisingly, Arron Banks and his group of companies have not relented despite one of his own officers being on tape saying they did in fact offshore data, which is further evidenced by emails obtained during the hearing. We don't want to stop our pursuit.  If this injunction is obtained, it could set a precedent and open the door to other cases where individuals can seek to discover and repatriate illegally held data - an issue we now know is a global one.

WHAT ARE WE DOING NOW?

While we have been fortunate to have had pro-bono legal support and some early donors, to continue this lawsuit we need to crowdfund for legal fees and associated costs. It is likely we will end up back in Court.  We are up against a very well-funded opposition. Arron Banks' group of companies chose independently to fight our efforts to obtain information and documents, which raises some very serious questions. We believe strongly that this case needs to be seen through, and we're grateful for your support.

WHO AM I?

I am Kyle Taylor, the director of Fair Vote UK. I believe it is vitally important that we - at this moment - fight with everything we can to defend our democratic systems and rule of law. Data is central to these issues. Confirming whether or not our data has been sent around the world – without our knowledge or consent – is pretty darn important.

WHO IS FAIR VOTE UK?

Fair Vote UK is a pro-democracy and transparency organisation set up in the wake of revelations that Vote Leave cheated in the referendum, and that Cambridge Analytica - who was confirmed to have done work for Leave.EU (funded by Arron Banks) – allegedly took troves of data from Facebook without people's consent.