What is the common denominator between the Ombudsman, the chair of the National Assembly, the Minister of Transport, MPs, top businessmen, journalists, musicians or criminals wanted by Interpol? The answer: they have all fallen victim to signature forgeries almost one month before the elections for European Parliament. A veritable political vaudeville is being played out in this country with hundreds of Bulgarians finding, to their astonishment, that their names are in lists supporting a given political formation. And immediately speculations sprang up that there is a black market for personal data in Bulgaria.

Power a means not an end

There are no official data of the existence of such a market, Commission for Personal Data Protection officials said. But admitted that they do not know how such a large bulk of personal information has been leaked. Nonetheless, they are not ruling out people’s personal ID numbers being taken from the website of the Central Election Commission by people who work with the databases. And while the Commission was pleading its innocence, information surfaced that there are 100 companies in Bulgaria which have been buying and selling genuine personal data. And it is not just ID numbers that were sold long ago for the sake of political dividends. By paying a certain price, anyone can buy information about any Bulgarian citizen – where he or she works, what his or her salary is, where he or she lives… In fact information like this is available in many other countries. The crux of the matter is what the aim is – political or business racketeering, studying rival companies or something else entirely. And everything has its price. In this case – the price is power and power is not a means; it is an end. The object of power is power, as George Orwell wrote. Prominent mathematician Prof. Mihail Konstantinov says that the personal data time-bomb is no surprise and that it actually went off for the first time 20 years ago. But that no one then took any notice of the phantom signatures. If the professor is right, then it would seem that all democratic elections held in this country in that time have been rigged. Almost half of the personal data of Bulgarian citizens have been compromised, the professor says, with the main conduit for their leakage being electoral registers that have been whisked off after elections by the sackfulls nobody knows where. The personal data of a great many Bulgarians are available to anyone who has access to the commercial register in this country. There, one can find out where a given person works, what his business is and whether he or she has a relative that wields any kind of political power. According to Ombudsman Konstantin Penchev, there is only one party out of all parties that have been registered for participation in the coming elections for European Parliament that is squeaky-clean and has not used forged signatures in its registration lists. And ironically, the Ombudsman himself is among the victims, whose forged signature is in the registration list of one of the parties. “To me it is quite clear there is a well-oiled personal data market in Bulgaria,” the Ombudsman comments. As to National Assembly chair Mihail Mikov, in his case the “casualty’ is his secretary. Whereas the name of the head of the Union of Communists appears in the register of one of the nationalistic parties. Not to mention the criminal bosses known as the Galev brothers who were declared missing two years ago and are on Interpol’s wanted list. The “icing on the cake” would be if the prosecutor general was to emerge as “supporting” some small party, without even knowing he had put his signature down to his personal data. We are all now expecting what the investigation instigated by him will come up with.

The consequences of personal data theft

Even though it is prohibited by law, the Central Election Commission has included Bulgarian citizens’ personal ID numbers in its registers. That means any employer can go to the Commission’s website and see what his employees’ political affiliations are. While the Interior Ministry is free to add our political views to their records. Experts say that the political parties will come off clear, that there will be no serious penalties, even though hundreds of complaints of personal data theft have been lodged. And that leads to the question – what exactly is the difference between this and the country George Orwell described…

English version: Milena Daynova