Slashdot Mirror
UK Police Database Abuse 'Hugely Intrusive'
twoheadedboy writes "Police database abuse has been branded as 'hugely intrusive' after a report showed over 900 officers and staff had breached the Data Protection Act over the last three years. Furthermore, 243 police officers and staff received criminal convictions for breaking laws set down by the DPA. 'Our investigation shows that not only have police employees been found to have run background records checks on friends and possible partners, but some have been convicted for passing sensitive information to criminal gangs and drug dealers,' said Daniel Hamilton, director of the Big Brother Watch."
You have nothing to fear from the authorities!
Right? Right? Helloooo?
You mean that when all those people were warning us about how all that surveillance could be abused, how all the increases in police power could wind up being a problem, they were right? WOW!
Palm trees and 8
In the UK, if you are questioned for a major crime, even as a witness, and a DNA sample is taken, you are on the database for life. You don't have to do the crime, you have to live within a few streets of someone might have done the crime.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
.. have won.
This story is sensationalist scare mongering crap and belongs in the Sun and certainly not here. There are literally millions of people who work for the police in the UK so to quote a figure of 800 incidents over three years suddenly seems pretty insignificant. My partner works for the police and has advised me that every record they check, leaves a log of who they are and what crime they are looking it up in relation to and why. Anyone caught looking things up for personal reasons are sacked and sometimes prosecuted. That's where the 800 and 243 figures come from.
People are people and yes it would be nice if the police and support staff were immune to the case of human stupidity. Personally I am far more concerned about higher-up, more serious incidents like the first investigation into phone tapping scandal which found little only 'isolated cases' and only 2 people involved when clearly it turns out over 4000 cases and potentially, nearly every British newspaper. The head of the first investigation then walked into a well paid job for the very people he was investigating with the blessing of the UK government and no questions were asked.
The people who work there are going to lose out, but the owners won't. They're already planning to start up the Sun on Sunday (or something similar), what's the betting they'll use this as an opportunity to get rid of the people they don't like and hire back the ones they do at a reduced rate? And the whole Rebekah Brooks thing is a smokescreen. They know if they'd kicked her out last week it wouldn't have been enough to sate the public and James Murdoch would have been next on the hit list. What they'll do instead is keep her dangling in front of the public while everyone bays for her blood and when it gets to fever pitch they'll cut her loose and claim they've done everything that was asked of them. Ultimately the Murdoch empire won't suffer one jot over this whole mess.
The system works. Access is logged and monitored, and the villains do get caught at it. They're not the sharpest truncheons in the box, to be honest.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
There are literally millions of people who work for the police in the UK so to quote a figure of 800 incidents over three years suddenly seems pretty insignificant. ...
like the first investigation into phone tapping scandal which found little only 'isolated cases' and only 2 people involved when clearly it turns out over 4000 cases and potentially,
Why don't you think the 800 cases aren't just the tip of the iceberg in the same way the phone tapping investigation turned out to be? After all cops have a hell of a lot more solidarity among themselves than reporters do and thus much less incentive to rat out another cop.
Anyone caught looking things up for personal reasons are sacked and sometimes prosecuted.
The problem is in the catching. It is completely impractical to check all of those audit logs unless something else happens to bring a person under investigation. As long as they keep their nose clean and stay away from looking up any "high profile" information like celebrities or major public crimes no one will even look at their audit trail much less put in all of the effort to determine if each search was legitimate. Misuse of the database is essentially unpoliceable.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
There are literally millions of people who work for the police in the UK
Really? Considering that working for the police in the UK involves being a member of the UK labor force, which is just over 31million persons, you're suggesting that at least 1 in 30 of them is working for the police. And that's interpreting your "literally millions" as being just 1 million.
Actually, adding together the police force sizes for England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, one gets a total of 164,580 which is about one sixth of a million.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire