Online petitions (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on 19 July 2019.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

Request

With regard to online Jersey Petitions such as 'Higher sentences for Paedophiles' which can been seen on Twitter and Facebook as being supported and signed by individuals outside of Jersey even as far away as the USA.

I would like to know what efforts are made to ensure all online Jersey petitions are only signed by local people with Jersey ISP / IP Internet Addresses to ensure no outside party or individual can fudge with them?

Response

IP addresses are checked using a commercial country database which is regularly updated. Only IP addresses that are marked as being in Jersey in the database are allowed to sign and / or create petitions.

In addition IP addresses can explicitly be blocked that may be returning incorrect results from the database or are VPN / proxy services based in Jersey that mask a user's true location.

Note that VPN / proxy services can work both ways - someone in Jersey may be using a service to mask their location in order to access streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and so on in the United States. If they post to social media whilst connected to those services they may appear to be in the United States if the social media platform uses IP geo-location to record where they are posting from.

This response has been issued on behalf of the States Greffe. The States Greffe is responsible for the information held by (and on behalf of) both itself and the States Assembly. Neither the States Assembly nor the States Greffe form part of the Government of Jersey and the Government was not involved either in the examination and retrieval of any information required for this response, nor in the drafting of the response itself.