his breach of data security is startlingly bad for the BNP, not simply for the fact that the party has lost data - almost everyone seems to have managed to do that recently - but for the nature of that information.
Not only does the data, now available online, include the entire membership list with full names (and former names where there have been changes for any reason), addresses, contact numbers, email addresses and in many cases the member's age, particularly where those members are under eighteen. Yes, that's right. This list includes members as young as fourteen, male and female. Where a family membership is bought and paid for, the whole family is listed.
As if this isn't bad enough, the notes that are attached to many of the entries leave a lot of the members open to difficulties in their jobs, some of them being in the armed forces or the police and the BNP too - an illegal combination, and where not illegal, frequently frowned upon. Other members are noted as construction managers, receptionists, district nurses, lay preachers, police officers, company directors and teachers among many others.
Like this wasn't enough, the BNP has also listed hobbies or interests where for some reason they are deemed relevant. Thus we have short-wave radio hams, amateur historians, pagans, line-dancers and even a witch (male).
The contributors to nazi sites, many of whom are also members of the BNP, are suddenly in a frenzy, expecting to be outed at any moment. Here's just one comment from the North-West Nationalist blog:
'I've just had a call, I'm on it to. I want my ****ing member money back, like has been mentioned here, I could lose my ****ing job. I'm bloody angry.'
