Scotland's Police Lose Data Because of Programmer's Error

Anne Thwacks writes Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Mawson told the [Scottish Police Authority] committee that a total of 20,086 records had been lost because a computer programmer pressed the wrong button between May and July last year. He added: "....they had been properly put on the system by the officers as a result of stopping and searching people, but we lost the outcome of it as a computer programming error. We have been working really hard to recover that data. I have personally overseen the sending out of several thousand emails to officers and follow-up audits. We have been working hard with HMICS to oversee everything that we do, to make sure it is done properly and I am pleased to say that the vast majority of that data, those results, are now back on the system."

Comments

What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if there was people powerful enough (politicians, ...) to clean their record? No, no, cannot be, complot theory. They surely don't have any functional backup. I am a believer my overlord.

Re:What if?

[u38cg]

Stop and search just doesn't happen to rich people. Stop, maybe, but certainly not search.

Re:What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has very little to do with people's police records becoming clean - it's about the police misleading the public (and our politicans) about the number of stop-and-searches being carried out ("they had been properly put on the system by the officers as a result of stopping and searching people, but we lost the outcome of it as a computer programming error"). Scotland - uniquely in the UK - continues to carry out "consensual searches" (searches with the "consent" of the victim) even when the person being searched is too young to give informed consent. The police claimed the number of searches was tiny (in comparison with previous years) but it turns out the police "lost" most of their records. Oops. How they've been forced to come clean. In follows on from public disquiet over the police quietly arming themselves for routine patrols in crime hotspots like small-town Inverness. Right now 1 in 5 Scots distrust the new improved, centralised police service.

Re:What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

No True Scotsman would distrust the new improved, centralised police service.

Even if you spell it with a zed.

Middle-Atlantic Anonymous Coward

Re:What if?

[freak0fnature]

Reminds me of lost IRS emails...

Re:What if?

[plopez]

Because they can afford *good* lawyers.

Re:What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

We brought in a high-paid consultant (who just "happened" to be a friend of the VP) for a new engineering drawing database they were setting up back in the 90s. You knew he was the "oracle expert" he claimed because every expert has a copy of "oracle for dummies" on their desk, right? He was "in charge" of the project, so even though their server was in our A/C'd datacenter, they didn't "need our services" to provide backups, etc - he brought in a summer student to do backups (solaris machine). It saved the actual files as normal filesystem files, but renamed them as "000000.dwg", "000001.pdf", "000002.doc", etc (don't ask me what happened if they hit 1M files... :P), and kept an index (with metadata tables) in oracle. ... after checking in, oh, I dunno, 40,000 drawings, documents, etc... he decided that "drop table master_index;" was a good idea one day. Yeah, it wasn't. Wonder if that was in his oracle for dummies book?

Anyways, I get handed a box full of tapes to "try and restore it" to some point (it was late-fall/early-winter, the summer student was gone back to school, so anything I restored would have been months old anyways, but... *something* right?). I for the life of me couldn't figure out WTF those tapes were written in, if anything - tar, cpio, backup/restore... hell, I was doing dd's on them to try and figure out WTF was even on them... nobody knew what the summer student had been doing to "back things up", no documented procedure, nada, just a box of tapes (old recycled tapes at that) that may or may not have been used as backups at all...

Yup, basically they wound up with 40,000 flat files I burned to some CD's for them so they could get another "summer student" the next summer to open in whatever program, one at a time, and check back in... but we did convince them to let us handle backups (like we did with all the other systems in our datacenter) for them. ;)

Re:What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on! You must be on drugs to believe that the cops only searches people who are defiant.
They search whoever they damn well want to search.

Re:What if?

[u38cg]

Not so much. One, they 'obviously' don't need to be searched and two, mostly aren't in an area where stop and search is proceeding.

And those guys want easier access to private data

[Anonymous Coward]

Bureaucracy in action: " I have personally overseen the sending out of several thousand emails". If there were less people at overseeing emails and more in IT the whole mess would not have happened. Perhaps they should even try reading about backups next time.

Programmer error, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks more to me they didn't have a backup plan.

Programmer error my ***.

Re: Programmer error, really?

[BlueTrin]

Obligatory XKCD reference: xkcd.com/327/

Re: Programmer error, really?

[Jamu]

They arrested Bobby Drop Tables?

Re: Programmer error, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, they couldn't find him cause they'd lost the db records. and the db table.

Re:Programmer error, really?

[david_thornley]

I find "programmer error" credible, which should tell you how much confidence I've got in their IT. If they don't have a backup for transaction data, and they are too cheap to provide a test environment, and don't restrict the programmers' access to the production database, programmer error is completely believable.

Computer programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that be typist or data clerk?

Re:Computer programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just glorified data entry. If they can type, they can program-- and the faster the better.

Re:Computer programmer

[arth1]

I'm not sure. A typist generally won't hold down a button for several months as this person allegedly did.
A brainfuck programmer who needs to access a big chunk of memory, on the other hand...

Re:Computer programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowadays we're told that any woman who knows how to use a keyboard is "coding," so you can see where the confusion comes from.

Convenient error, perchance?

[Simon Brooke]

Speaking as someone who's been following this story as it developed, it seems to me that the data that has been 'lost' is data the high heid yins of Scotland's police were very eager to lose. They'd been acting beyond their remit - and probably beyond the law - and they knew it.

So I suspect someone with scrambled egg on their hat took that programmer into a quiet room and said 'you will make an unfortunate error this afternoon, or we'll be sending the boys round'. I'm pretty sure the government suspect the same.

Heads will, I suspect, roll - and I don't think they will be the heads of programmers.

Re:Convenient error, perchance?

[AK Marc]

So I suspect someone with scrambled egg on their hat took that programmer into a quiet room and said 'you will make an unfortunate error this afternoon, or we'll be sending the boys round'. I'm pretty sure the government suspect the same.

Heads will, I suspect, roll - and I don't think they will be the heads of programmers.

They will be of programmers. It'll be a programmer that logged in, and a programmer that hit the keys.

The programmer should have demanded a signed sheet of paper ordering the "error". If they threaten to fire him for that, he points out that if he's fired, then he'll talk. They'll either kill the programmer (pretty rare, despite what the movies indicate) or work out some paperwork in a mutually-destructive-pact. Not the police, but when I've ever been asked to do something questionable, I've always managed to get it in writing, with nobody really objecting.

Re:Convenient error, perchance?

[CrimsonAvenger]

heid yins

Is that like a muckety muck?

Slightly more seriously, how is "heid" pronounced (besides with a Scottish accent)? Like "hide"? "Heed"? I'm assuming "yin" is pronounced the same as it would be in "yin-yang"?

In any case, my thanks for the new bit of slang....

Re:Convenient error, perchance?

[ColdGrits]

heid yins

Is that like a muckety muck?

Slightly more seriously, how is "heid" pronounced (besides with a Scottish accent)? Like "hide"? "Heed"? I'm assuming "yin" is pronounced the same as it would be in "yin-yang"?

In any case, my thanks for the new bit of slang....

Heid is pronounced "heed"
Yin, well, "Yin"

Head yin - Big Boss, The Head of the Outfit. The Head One.

Re: Convenient error, perchance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one head will roll and it will be the programmer's. Despite what your delusions, computer weenies are universally despised. He's probably a pedo.

Re:Convenient error, perchance?

[Ol Olsoc]

Heads will, I suspect, roll - and I don't think they will be the heads of programmers.

And if they do, it will be the new guy in the mailroom, or the third shift janitor.

Re: Convenient error, perchance?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he wasn't a pedo before, they'll certainly let him know that he was collecting those sorts of photos for years, whether he was aware of it or not.

You see, it's right here on his computer that we confiscated, clear as day. Who knew he was such a sick fuck? Shocking!

Re:Convenient error, perchance?

[Anne Thwacks]

And if they do, it will be the new guy in the mailroom, or the third shift janitor.

Depending on which is not a fluent English speaker.

Re:Convenient error, perchance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on which is not a fluent English speaker.

They're all Scots, none of them are fluent English speakers.

(btw, I'm half Scot myself, on my mother's side.)

Software testing ... what a novel concept

[Bomarc]

At least this article admits to a level of "programmer error". However --- like most "computer error" news articles, this one misses a key point: This (like many others) is actually management error. Management failed to oversee programmers. Management failed implement test. Management failed.
I just wonder how much longer before software testing will get the respect it deserves.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[TuringTest]

Software testing doesn't protect against a user pressing the wrong button, which then works as expected. I agree it's a management error, but the failure in such cases is a lack of user testing.

Systems should be designed to follow the interactions that are more likely to be made by users, not the other way around - forcing users to follow the path that a developer thought would make sense. Unfortunately, user-centered design is still a foreign concept to a good chunk of developer houses.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[b.d.albarda]

Software designs following System- and Use Case-analysis would prevent against destructive operations if implemented correctly. If there would be a use case 'delete all from ...' then the system worked as designed. If there isn't (which I suspect), the ability to delete the data should be impossible, so that even a moron or an evil user couldn't wreak havoc. That is a part of software security that should have been imposed by management, not the user's responsibility (as the user can't fix it so it shouldn't have the tool in the first place).

If the error in this case is made through a developer's or admin's backdoor (often called 'control panel'), that gives full options to mess around, the regular _Managament_ restrictions should apply like not operating on live data and always make a backup beforehand. This should help fixing 'pushing the wrong button' kinds of mistakes like 'oops I ran sudo rm -r *'.

If the error is made by a 'bug', so that a software error (coming from a programmer's error) damages the data indirectly (or the user in Therac-25), the it's not pushing the wrong button but bad software testing and validation, again something Management should oversee and be responsible for.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[TapeCutter]

Management failed.

Yep, if the coder followed procedures, not his fault, if there were no procedures also not his fault. Inadequate testing regime, again, not his fault. Anyone in the business of coding for more than an hour knows serious coding errors like this happen all the time in development. If these expected errors manage to navigate the layers of testers and admins between check-in and production then someone else screwed-up, either that or there's a hole in the test/delivery procedures.

Don't have layers of testers and admins between check-in and production? Again, not the coders fault - since no coder worth their paycheck is so foolish as to boast his code does not require independent testing. It's the same deal with jobs such a welding pipelines, the welder is expected to have the requisite skills and training to produce quality work to a deadline, they are definitely not asked to guarantee every weld is fit for purpose, the inspector with the x-ray machine does that. No matter how good you QA regime is, at the end of the day software will still have bugs, and pipelines will occasionally explode. The best one can hope for is to not repeat the same mistake twice, and even that seems unattainable since it requires an absence of incompetence and malice.

I just wonder how much longer before software testing will get the respect it deserves.

I think the bottom line there is that many devs and testers don't realise that when they disagree about "what it should do" they are doing their job. Both groups exists to throw work at each other until both are in agreement. Often there's also some testing effort from the customer and the in-house testers are the meat in the sandwich when they ask questions. Three layers of testers is not uncommon, the third being a completely independent group between tester and customer tester.

I've seen the testers job and read more test plans than I care to remember, a tester that has the tenacity of a dog with a bone over minor points annoys the shit out of me but gets my utmost respect, bonus points because someone has to do it and I certainly don't want the job.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[Anonymous Coward]

I go toe to toe with my boss on a weekly basis about how hard it should be to delete records from the medical record system we developed. Our support lines get swamped with lowly receptionists who need to remove notes they've made on a patient's phone log (an important part of the chart) and they just don't want to bother the manager or the doctor who are actually authorized to remove notes from the chart, they're just so, so very busy, you know.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[Minwee]

This (like many others) is actually management error. Management failed to oversee programmers. Management failed implement test. Management failed.

And Management lost potentially incriminating records which contradicted what Management had stated publicly. Management destroyed evidence of unlawful behaviour carried out by Management, and it can no longer be used against Management. And the worst that will happen as a result of this is there will be a mildly embarrassing story in the BBC followed by an increase in the IT budget, ostensibly to prevent further "mistakes".

Management succeeded . Brilliantly.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[tnk1]

Management failed to prevent "programmers" from having access to production systems. Developers will break things all the time in the course of development, which is why you don't have them working on your actual production system.

Unless they meant a system administrator or a data entry clerk with access to delete existing records was a "programmer", which is just as likely given the usual level of government understanding of IT.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[Bomarc]

Some highlights:
o Worked for large co; found several "Sev 1" bugs on a product was was proposed to be released soon. I was put on inventorying computers; product became one of the larges failures in company's history due to -- bugs.
o Same co, later: needed to make a code drop to another business. My job: To make sure that the code worked as expected, and could compile. (they got a "special" version of the code.) I told the PM that we shouldn't have the code on a given storage server -- it (the code) could accidentally be "compiled" causing problems. PM said that would not happen. A few days later, someone compiled the coded on the storage server. PM required that I had to find a way to 'fix it'. At the same time I looked into 'who' compiled the code: The same PM. (This PM was also was responsible for a lawsuit that cost the company millions... and was promoted.) o Worked for a local utility. Was told that we were going to use a copy of "live customer data" for dev/testing. Objected, was told that "test" customer data could NEVER be visible to "real world". Two weeks into testing: Customer Service contact us -- customer billings were off. Sure enough: "test" was crossed over with "production". (My contract was suddenly "ended" shortly after I reported the security error - that was EXACTLY as I had predicted). About six months later, the state Attorney General was looking into the utility for using ... live customer data for testing.
o Worked for an aerospace co. Spend a week creating a detailed functional spec on a report needed by the business department. The developed report (delivered a month late) looked NOTHING like the spec. The totals didn't add up to anything, the columns were out of sequence, the colors were wild (not random -- just not anywhere near the spec.) Three days later, my contract suddenly ended.
o Worked for a company that managed big data. Found out that they had single point of failure ("fail-over"), and I had experience with fail-over situations. Was told that the data center could never be down for very long, and that this risk was minimal. About three months later, the data center suffered a catastrophic failure that took over a week to get minimal power restored. People involved with the failure were promoted.

So many, many, many more times: Like when development released product to production without consulting testing and caused customer data errors, like development removing all permissions on a SQL table to get their dev work done (when the permissions were re-applied, the code didn't work any more)

A good QA / Tester need to know all of the jobs: Development, PM, customer service and Testing to get the job done. Unfortunately QA never gets paid the level of knowledge that it has, the risk that it assumes, and - it's not unusual for bad management to (FREQUENTLY) have QA reporting to development; for bad management frequently blame the messenger. Interesting all the years that I've worked in QA -- I've never seen bad management get the blame.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[Anonymous Coward]

Never. Human nature is not to be cautious. Humans like to push ahead without giving the risks any real consideration. "That's all stuff that happens to other people who aren't as smart as I am."

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[WaffleMonster]

At least this article admits to a level of "programmer error". However --- like most "computer error" news articles, this one misses a key point: This (like many others) is actually management error. Management failed to oversee programmers. Management failed implement test. Management failed.

Assuming story on its face is true the blame for failure to recover goes to IT hierarchy responsible for managing the database. No data programming error should have the capability of causing unrecoverable data loss. It isn't so much you guard against someone or something typing DELETE FROM ... as much as retaining ability to restore database to a transitionally consistent state immediately prior to execution. There is no excuse for failure to retain a chain of log backups.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[david_thornley]

I had my contract with a bank end shortly after I was told to promote a certain program (in Perl) from QA to Production, and did so without checking whether the program in Production was at all similar to what was checked in. It turned out that it had been changed on the production machine without checking it in or putting it in Test or QA, and that my not checking for that was a Bad Thing according to the manager. I was relieved to have that contract end.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[Bomarc]

... and management failed to implement policies and practices in place to prevent development from having direct access to production DB's (without oversight). (It did appear that backups were maintained)

Even some thing as simple as "database cleanup" can be a problem when not properly tested. In once instance I was testing a server/database migration/upgrade. In the Test Plan, I called out that permission issues could not be tested (security wouldn't allow it) and failure to test could result in data loss. As predicted - there was a problem that came to permissions that I was disallowed from testing -- that resulted in data loss (Self defense: I tested as best as I could around the known permission issue).

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[terjeber]

There is never a need to remove anything at all from such records. Set the "status" to "deleted" is appropriate. This means that whatever the SQL user the programmer can log into the database with is not granted "DELETE" permission on anything at all.

Re:Software testing ... what a novel concept

[terjeber]

The error here is that the programmer was given a login to a database and that login had been granted "DELETE" permissions. On vital systems, the standard software should basically never be granted "DELETE" permissions, only CREATE, SELECT and UPDATE. Deleting a record should involve setting its status to "deleted" nothing else. There is only one reason (except the obvious ability to use referential integrity when doing business operations) to delete something from a table, and that is to free up space. Since it costs less to add more storage to the system than it does to pay a programmer to enter "DELETE FROM WHERE LAST_UPDATED

Programmers do frequently need to be given access to databases, and as such they will typically have lots of access to sensitive data. Sadly most companies include delete access when granting to the logins the developers use. That is never necessary. Only a single login should have delete access, and it should be strictly monitored.

And how is this a bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

So in what way is this a bad thing?

The police lose some records that show their control over the population.....

How, in any way is this bad?

Re:And how is this a bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The records in question showed the police continuing to do something - perform "consensual searches" - that they had previously assured the public they were discontinuing. This is about accountability, not about control. We already ken the police control us. We hoped that the Government would rein them in - but that relies on Holyrood being told the truth by Stephen House and his cronies.

Incidentally, "consensual searches" are no longer carried out elsewhere in the UK - because the risk of police misusing such searches is too high. That's what's at issue here - the police routinely use "consensual searches" to harass people too young to give informed consent.

Ah yes...

[Sneeka2]

The good old "DELETE FROM records WHERE 1;.... FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUU----" on the production system on a Friday afternoon...

Re:Ah yes...

[WaffleMonster]

The good old "DELETE FROM records WHERE 1;.... FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUU----" on the production system on a Friday afternoon...

Even then you would have to be a hack to not be able to recover a snapshot of database prior to the incident from redo log.

Properly managed capability to see database as it existed at any point in time is maintained throughout the useful life of the database with no exceptions.

Pressing the wrong button ?

[BlueTrin]

It is amazing that in this day and age, a system containing police records allow certain users to delete data in an irrevocable way whether it is a button press or anything else.

'Programmer' working with live data?

[hazeii]

Very convenient, and of course we all know programmers develop their code on the only copy of a live database (of which there are no backups)...

Re:'Programmer' working with live data?

[sound vision]

Yeah, someone working in the police force there is either very incompetent or very shady. I think the latter is more likely. It's not 1990, this sort of data will be backed up unless someone specifically decides not to.

Re:'Programmer' working with live data?

[Kjella]

Very convenient, and of course we all know programmers develop their code on the only copy of a live database (of which there are no backups)...

I know of at least one project from my former life as a consultant where that happened, the production server was available and being set up to match development for the first release, then it kinda just rolled into production without anyone notifying IT so all the production monitoring, backups etc. was never turned on. They were not happy when they eventually found out many months and many, many manhours of production data later, but fortunately nothing bad happened in the mean time. Or another project I was on, where finance had kinda built their own system outside IT that they de facto used for reporting but wasn't supported in any way. If you haven't seen it happen, be grateful.

Re:'Programmer' working with live data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Police Scotland is basically Strathclyde Police v2.0 (same Chief Constable, same "Keeping People Safe" crap on their cars, same old officers in shiny new uniforms), so I'd tend to agree with the "very shady" comment. There's an old joke where a TV crew are speaking to various police forces about corruption... they offer each force some cash in return for an interview:

The Met press officer tells them that police corruption is taken very seriously, it's inevitable in any large organisation, but they'll come down hard on it whenever they find it. And they return the cash offered because it's their job to speak to the press.

Greater Manchester Police tell them that police corruption - while serious - isn't widespread in the GMP. And they return the cash offered because it's their job etc

Strathclyde Police tell them that for £1000 Strathy Polis will say whatever the journos want them to say.

Police Scotland has moved on, of course. £1000 won't buy a journo fuck all these days.

Re:'Programmer' working with live data?

[ihtoit]

a month in the Aberdeen Hilton? More colloquially known as Queen Street Police Station or Grampian/PS Divisional Headquarters.

Re:'Programmer' working with live data?

[DarkOx]

Smaltalk...

Re:'Programmer' working with live data?

[Attila Dimedici]

Yeah, someone working in the police force there is either very incompetent or very shady.

Actually, you are overlooking the most likely scenario: Someone (or more than someone) working for the Scottish Police Authority is both very incompetent AND very shady.

Phrasing?

[GrandCow]

"Programmer error" != some idiot pressing the wrong button.

If you want powerful software, you get powerful results. You also get powerful fuck-ups. Don't blame the person who coded it, blame the idiot who clicked through 4 different "are you REALLY SURE you want to do this" warnings.

Re:Phrasing?

[TuringTest]

Or you can blame the idiot designer who didn't properly explain the consequences of "doing this" in their black-box interface, so that the user could make an informed decision.

Re:Phrasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol
>Implying users read explanations and/or manuals, care about consequences, pay attention to training, and even try to make 'informed' decisions.

Re:Phrasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think this happened at the GUI level? This was some db admin logged in and kludged an update statement.

# update TABLE set COLUMN = 'something';

UPDATE 20086
# rollback;
NOTICE: there is no transaction in progress
# fuck

Re:Phrasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can blame the designer that designed a system where it's possible for a normal user of the system to bulk delete an entire swath of the database while working on a single record, and without having an audit trail record that allows point-in-time recovery from backups without any data loss.

Re:Phrasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmers are not architects, neither are system engineers and all fall under the supervision of the CIO who is subordinate to the CFO.
Who is busy cooking the the books to hide the graft of some low level beauracrat. If you old world types would simply execute citizens on the street, like we do in udots this would all go away.

Re:Phrasing?

[Dr. Evil]

The article's title is sensationalist and the caption feeds that sensationalism.

The content itself is more nuianced.

records were corrupted last year

"computer programmer pressed the wrong button between May and July last year".

we lost the outcome of it as a computer programming error.

"made a mistake in the language that I used"

He added: "That lost the results data from those records. So they had been properly put on the system by the officers as a result of stopping and searching people, but we lost the outcome of it as a computer programming error.

"We have been working really hard to recover that data. I have personally overseen the sending out of several thousand emails to officers and follow-up audits.

"Corrupted" could mean anything from the records being absent to the programmer forgetting to include references to officer badge numbers. The error may have been a missing test case in the code before it was promoted to production, or if they're not that automated, somebody in UAT missing something.

Although, maybe the corrected code was something like:
If ( ageofsuspect <= 12 )
{
printf("Error, you cannot randomly search people 12 and under. Did you mean 16?");
getuserinput(ageofsuspect);
}

Real Programmers Do Not Press Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Real Programmers press keys on their keyboards or toggle switches on front panels. But push buttons? No sir, that they do not do.

Relatedly, so apparently this police corps' restore strategy consists of "sending emails to officers". The idea of taking backups before you lose the data is entirely novel here, isn't it? And the idea of separating development, staging, and production? Just run in developmestruction mode with no backups, right? This is the police service of what backwards banana republic country again?

The "DROP TABLE crime;" button?

[sce7mjm]

Is it next to the "any" key?

Heads will roll?

[Bruce66423]

In your dreams. They've got plausible deniability. It would be good to come back in five years and watch the career paths of those involved, especially this 'programmer'.

Re:Heads will roll?

[JaredOfEuropa]

You would expect organisations like these to be held to a higher level accountability than us mere mortals, but sadly that is often not the case. Try tell an Internal Revenue inspector: "I am sorry but I have lost those records of my offshore savings account due to pressing a wrong button" and see what answer you get. Hell, as a kid I never got away with "the dog ate my homework". Yet what consequences will follow from losing hundreds of important police records during an investigation into police conduct?

If any one person, under orders, acting on their own initiative or simply making a mistake, is capable of irrevocably wiping important records like these, then there is something seriously wrong with your organisation. Someone is responsible for managing IT and keeping information/records at the police, start with them.

Re:Heads will roll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, as a kid I never got away with "the dog ate my homework".

Neither did I, even when the dog did eat my homework (quite literally, he chewed and swallowed, but later regurgitated).

Re:Heads will roll?

[david_thornley]

I knew a guy who was believed when he said the dog ate his homework, because he went into details as to how hard it was to get the dog to eat it.

Re:Heads will roll?

[Anonymous Coward]

My dog kind of gnawed my homework before, but it was still legible enough that I turned it in. Another time, however, my dad shredded my homework by mistake. We were supposed to write a professional cover letter, and so it included an address block. He was in the habit of shredding anything with personal data on it, and didn't realize this was my homework. I brought in a ziplock of the cross-cut shreds, and the teacher gave me a break. Told to me make sure to save things in addition to just printing when done in the future.

Scotland Yard Not So New After All?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bunch of drunkards those Irish anyway so it's a wonder anyone noticed.

Re:Scotland Yard Not So New After All?

[Coisiche]

Actually, New Scotland Yard is the HQ of the Metropolitan Police in London and this disaster was only for Police Scotland.

Police Scotland is the recently formed amalgamation of the four or five police forces that Scotland had into a single force. The merger was to unify various systems, presumably so that something like this could affect the whole of Scotland rather than just one part.

Sackings and investigation required.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, what kind of system can't recover from a backup? Why can't this system? What idiot allowed the situation to arise where backups can't be restored?

Re:Sackings and investigation required.

[Builder]

This can't be restored because the police do not want it restored. The are under investigation for abuse of stop and search powers, and racial profiling. Suddenly all of the reports that they have to file after each stop and search are gone. IT error my ass.

GCHQ to the rescue!

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't GCHQ have a backup? They have a Backup Of Everything, no?

(captcha: archives)

Re:GCHQ to the rescue!

[gewalker]

Pfft, they should just call the CIA/NSA to get one of their "backup copies".

Re:GCHQ to the rescue!

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Pfft, they should just call the CIA/NSA to get one of their "backup copies".

              ^^^This FTW

Murica. FUCK yeah.

Re:And those guys want easier access to private da

[aaaaaaargh!]

What's even more sad is that he has most definitely not "personally overseen the sending out of several thousand emails". At best, he has sent some memo around that said something like this: "Send out emails now! That's an order! Yours sincerely, your boss. P.S.: Fuck you!"

Irish?

[TapeCutter]

It's Scotland Police, nothing to do with Scotland yard or Ireland. Scotland is the land where cops punch out suicide bombers while their still on fire! They don't need no stinking coding error to cover their tracks, they just have to glare at the server and it will forget everything it knows.

Re:Irish?

[dave420]

I thought John Smeaton was a baggage handler, and he kicked the firey terrorist in the balls. He got a gallantry medal for that from Liz.

Re:Irish?

[TapeCutter]

Take your word for it, I was working from memory. The medal must be a great conversation starter for him....

Ah...

[nospam007]

ye olde 'programmer pressed the wrong button' again when the brass ignored their pleas for implementing backup systems.

Karma _is_ a bitch.

pay peanuts, get monkeys

[mounty1]

Those that can, do. Those that can't teach. Those that can't even teach end up working for the cops, either as 'forensics', trashing peoples computers, or clowns like this one.

Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he just forgot to put the WHERE in the DELETE FROM

Single key mistake?

[aglider]

A single key mistake from a programmer (not a user, be warned) that can delete a whole lot of data needs a specific function to be coded.
Cannot be a mistake. It's intentional. Intentional stupidity at least.
On the other side a single key error from a user is different. But still, a function that wipes data, all of them, with a single key(press) should require no less than a second key for confirmation.
My personal diagnosis:
- 95% The report is totaly nonsense trying to move responsibility on someone else.
- 5% That was a reall single key mistake

Re:Single key mistake?

[david_thornley]

Consider the difference between "DELETE FROM foo WHERE bar = 0;" and DELETE FROM foo WHERE bar > 0;". If bar is a numeric column that should always be positive, we've gone from deleting erroneous rows to all good rows. One character difference. Easy to do accidentally. Also easy to catch if the shop is properly run, and if top management doesn't want that error to happen.

Re:Single key mistake?

[HornWumpus]

One I saw.

Business application. Sales bean counting.

Pretty standard stuff. Start a new entry. First step. Enter old buisness#, leave blank for new. When enter is hit the computer creates parent row and returns new # to client.

If you bailed out of the entry without hitting enter once, it would call cleanup with null. Which was fine, except the one cleanup function our 'genius architect' had written himself, to help make the deadline. For some reason he thought that a null meant no constraint, delete everything. So when someone bailed out right after starting (not that common) _all_ the comments got nuked by cleanup. They'd be there for a day or two, so anybody checking would see them. Then gone. What possible function nuking a table could have had escapes me. He worked harder to make it worse. Then again, his whole employment was one long knowledge is power play.

Of course the architect had a tizzy. All the cleanup functions should have been as dumb as his. Then the problem would have been apparent in testing. As it was he had ignored the complaints of disappearing comments for 3 months before someone looked at his code indecently. Idiot.

Re:Single key mistake?

[aglider]

This type of cases falls in the "stupidity" category. That also means that the case has never been reviewd and tested. Double stupidity.

Scotland's Police Lose Data Because of Programmer'

[lippydude]

"Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Mawson told the [Scottish Police Authority] committee that a total of 20,086 records had been lost because a computer programmer pressed the wrong button"

And they don't keep backups, like the most trivial ISP does, like I used to work for ...

So....

[Trailer Trash]

Is Lois Lerner working in Scotland now?

Re:So....

[david_thornley]

She only lost internal emails, which were not considered official records.

And where was the backup?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is inexcusable to not have a backup of the database. Sure the programmer was stupid. Should take less than 5 minutes to restore that many records from the backup that should be in place.

Re:And where was the backup?

[ihtoit]

the backups were apparently in police notebooks. Police notebooks are intended to be complete verbatim records of encounters with members of the public, but we all know that doesn't happen. We are talking about stop/search records here, and while City of London police did pilot body cams for a while (I submitted a story on this, it was rejected for strange unknown reason) in response to a public campaign for police to submit to constant public monitoring ("Leon's Law") hence complete oversight by the PUBLIC who they are meant to SERVE, it hasn't caught on enough to be mandated.

The question that should be on top of everyone's

[ihtoit]

...mind, is: ...why was a lowly data monkey allowed the sort of access required to "accidentally" delete official records??

It takes a special kind of negligent to permit such crass contempt for operational data. This should prompt a criminal prosecution of not only the operator but the idiot who accepted the specification as well. Hell, my personal wiki doesn't allow deletion (as is the default, it takes a deliberate effort to change this to allow even an administrator account to delete ANYTHING), because yes it does have whitelisted guest accounts, I don't trust anyone (not even myself) to not one day decide to be really fucking stupid and "accidentally" erase months if not years of accrued work. Dear Police Scotland, YOU NEED HOBBYISTS LIKE ME RATHER THAN THE TWATS YOU PAY TENS OF THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS OF POUNDS TO, TO AT LEAST OFFER ASSURANCES THAT YOUR ORDINARY USERS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO *DELETE* RECORDS!

every modern keyboard has "Drop table" button

[user.aaaaa]

no wonder

Bullshit

[drinkypoo]

You cannot lose data because of one wrong keystroke. You can only lose data as part of a persistent culture of being careless about data. Anything put into this system should be logged, and that log is the backup. Data was lost due to inadequate, incompetent design. Or, it was designed to lose data, and it was very competent.

Re:Bullshit

[Galaga88]

Well, there was a lot of wrong keystrokes in just the right order leading up to this, but it did end in the erroneous pressing of "enter" - without which the prior keystrokes of DELETE * FROM EVIDENCE wouldn't have mattered.

But it was definitely the single, final, erroneous keystroke that is to blame and therefore definitely an accident.

Only in Holyrood

[naris]

TFA:

The admission came as senior officers appeared before a Holyrood committee.

Among them was Chief Constable Sir Stephen House, who said he had apologised for giving incorrect information to the police watchdog over stop and search statistics.

This is something that can only happen in Holyrood.
Sounds like they need to get their House in order

Yzma

[Anonymous Coward]

a total of 20,086 records had been lost because a computer programmer pressed the wrong button

Yzma: Why do we even HAVE that button?!?!?

Re:Yzma

[Anonymous Coward]

...in case you need to "evidence" that you've discontinued a shady practice that you've assured regulators you'll discontinue, whereas, in fact, you kept doing it. Police Scotland got caught out in a not-truth - they promised to discontinue consensual searches (bringing them in line with other UK forces), they continued performing these searches, and when they reported a HUGE drop they were challenged, and their un-truth was exposed.

That button was very useful!

backups

[brausch]

Whatever happened to off-line backups? One mistake can't wipe you out then.

Re:backups

[WaffleMonster]

Whatever happened to off-line backups? One mistake can't wipe you out then.

What is worse all database systems worth using offer the ability to view the database as it was at any point in history. It is like a rolling historical backup guaranteeing data cannot be lost forever due to mistakes manipulating data.

Dialogue

[Anonymous Coward]

New Developer: SSMS isnt doing anything and is displaying old data on my screen.
Lead Developer Troll: Hmm, Try pressing F5 like in Internet Explorer to refresh
New Developer: Okay, it's telling me (20086 row(s) affected)
Lead Developer Troll: TROLOLOLOL You're fired.
New Developer: Why???
Lead Developer Troll: Because of this, http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/02/20/0017233/scotlands-police-lose-data-because-of-programmers-error

Och

[oldmac31310]

a few neds prolly got ewey scot free like.

Time codes are very hard to fake.

[Anonymous Coward]

The emphasis on how "hard" they are working does sound a bit like Uncle Claude in Strange Brew,
just because I don't know what it is, doesn't mean I'm lying".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejiSCSafHxM

someone please tell me I'm imagining this?

[ihtoit]

This news breaks the same DAY leaks of Police Scotland are discovered to have been (and continue to be) performing an undisclosed number of "consensual" stop-searches on *children* under 12?

HINT: CHILDREN UNDER 12 CANNOT LAWFULLY GIVE CONSENT IN SCOTLAND.

This while the Hollie Grieg thing is STILL ongoing despite the fact that Robert Green has been persecuted by the Scottish police and judiciary for exposing the former Lord Advocate's involvement in the cover-up of her friends' involvement, more to the point her use of public money to pursue private civil litigations against anybody who goes after her on a public forum for continuing the cover-up? Come get me, bitch. I will take you the fuck down on any public forum.

Backups???

[Anonymous Coward]

If this data was in a database, or even on computers as files - they should have had a backup program to cover them in the event of need for disaster recovery.

Tut tut...

[socceroos]

An event driven and event sourced system would have prevented this.