Slashdot Mirror
UK Police Accessed Civilian Data For Fun and Profit, Says Report (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Motherboard: A report from activist group Big Brother Watch surfaced that says more than 800 U.K. police staff inappropriately accessed personal information between June 2011 and December 2015. Motherboard reports: "The report says some police staff used their access to a growing trove of police data, which includes personal information on civilians, for entertainment and personal and financial gain. In several notable incidents, one Metropolitan Police officer found the name of a victim so funny that he attempted to take a photo of the driving license and send it to his friend over Snapchat. A Greater Manchester Police officer tipped someone off that they would be arrested, and one from North Yorkshire Police conducted a check on a vehicle on his phone whilst off-duty. The report also includes incidents of staff distributing other types of police data. Someone from South Wales Police was dismissed after photographing and distributing restricted documents "for personal gain," the report said. Not only was some information not needed for official police work, according to the report, but was shared with third parties outside the police, including some organized crime groups, 877 times. In total, 2,315 incidents of inappropriate access or distribution of data were reported. The majority of incidents, 1,283, ended up with no disciplinary action taking place, while 297 ended in a resignation or dismissal, 258 resulted in a written or verbal warning, and 70 led to a criminal conviction or caution."
No! That can't be. You just ruined my day! I was supposed to first post on this story! This was my arrangement with whipslash. Seems that his word is worth nothing... I mean this is not the first time. He has promised us unicode a long time ago, and its still not here.
What is the IQ and EQ of an average policeman ?
Another article gets the terminology wrong.
It's CITIZENS not civilians. Except for the military, everyone is a civilian since they are not under military jurisdiction. Police are civilians with no special powers over a citizen. The civilian police are also subject to civil law not military law.
CITIZENS...
Power corrupts. This has been crystal clear throughout recorded human history.
I know this event was in the UK, but the same happens in the US where I live, and this aspect of human nature was the primary motivator for the founding fathers of the nation to set up a system that would curtail governmental power to only the minimum required. The government was to be held in check by its citizens, and derive its power from the broad consent of the governed (not necessarily the consent of each individual, which is unworkable in practice).
However, since then we have found endless "good reasons" to remove those curtailments, one by one, little by little... reasons to constantly add more centralized power, and each little step made so much sense. Each seemed so very reasonable to good and honest people. The end result however, is abuse on a mass scale. Civil asset forfeiture, abuse of governmental monitoring of citizens, "constitution free zones", ever increasing Orwellian levels of surveillance, a power-elite who are above the law, groups using governmental power to oppress others who aren't harming them... And even if you get past the outright corruption, the sheer scale makes it bloated and inefficient.
Good civil infrastructure is required for a well functioning country, so there is a genuine need for many types of governmental functions. But this tension between that legitimate need, and the problems that come with massive centralizations of power, is hard to solve. Power begets more power, ad infinitum. Eventually it may be best to start over from scratch, but that isn't great either: the chaos and disruption would cause its own huge problems. It's hard to start over in an orderly manner, and any more, a high % of the population doesn't want freedom.
Who'd think people with such access to data couldn't be fully trusted.
Not-European !!!
Haven't we learned today that our royal government and its members are all excluded from obeying the laws they impose on the rest of us?
they need more powers!
It offers:
A person who is not a member of a specified profession or group.
with the first usage from 1946
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/... (probably paywalled)
"Robust action": You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
They take no action in the majority of cases then wonder why people are skeptical of giving them more powers to see what ordinary people are doing.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It can be argued that the offence should be taken more seriously, but there's some good news here.
The story seems to suggest that exactly 2,315 incidents happened between June 2011 and December 2015. Wrong: this is the number that were discovered. I would be highly surprised if there were more incidents that no one picked up on. How many more I will not speculate.
UK is a surveillance state, as is US. This crap is happening here, now, and in much greater volume, but it is being covered. Here it is federal, not local, so the power to cover is much greater than the will to do justice, or be excellent.
and one from North Yorkshire Police conducted a check on a vehicle on his phone whilst off-duty
This particular one is meaningless without further info. Could be he was just being a good citizen and investigating a suspicious person, or could be he's abusing his power. In either case, it seems more like a failure in their IT -- they could simply ban unapproved usage, or log it with its justification so its available but not abused.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This is the problem with the Panopticon. It's ripe for abuse. It can (and will) be abused by individual 'bad apples', but also by institutional 'bad actors'. There will also be scope creep, lax oversight, and reflexive instincts to protect the Thin Blue Line, even when abuse is proven and rampant.
I've always wondered why we don't hear about more instances of abuse. My speculation is that these internal activities are routinely secret and may not even be discovered by the security apparatus itself. Or it is discovered and blown off with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Or it is discovered and the individuals involved are disciplined or dismissed quietly, to avoid bad publicity. Or... well the scenarios just go on and on.
Out of over 200,000+ police? My guess is this is "800 caught red-handed". Seems like the UK police are pretty OK with this too, with most offenders not getting in any trouble at all. Good show!
Last time I checked, in rural New Mexico the price of an NCIC check on your daughter's boyfriend was a 12-pack. If you collect it, they will come :-)
And some - like doing a lookup of a vehicle while off-duty - might not be mis-use. If a cop sees a vehicle that seems to be involved in a crime, does he/she have to be on duty at a time to look up information?
FreePascal (fp) killed your homiez? Kids, stay off that language!
EU was the root of the evil. Now, that UK voted to get back their sovereignty, no Universal Declaration of Human Rights will impair the progress of the kingdom.
These are just the known cases. There are probably plenty more that were not caught.
Ah - the fun of blaming conspiracy theorists when the reality is the mere development of language.
Offering the OED quotes makes the point:
1946 J. Adams From Gags to Riches xiv. 221 Show gals are smarter and keener than most ‘civilians’.
1975 Sci. Amer. Feb. 6/3 The listening public—civilians, we call them—its composers, critics and conductors are indeed fortunate that so many excellent instrumentalists spend so much time practicing and producing music.
1986 New Yorker 17 Mar. 57/1 We spotted something up top of one of our highest towers..and we climbed up and found out it was a civilian.
2003 Metro (London ed.) 29 Dec. 8/2 When you're a football player, you're a football player, not a civilian.
The writers were obviously searching for a convenient term, and grab 'civilian'. It may be an abuse to do so, but surely all language development starts that way, and whatever else linguistics demonstrates, it does show that language shifts ALL the time. Which is why Chaucer is incomprehensible and Shakespeare is hard work.
Why won't you share your data? we're the police, the good guys!
Apparently if I don't share my data the terrorists win.
How many terrorists did sharing my data help apprehend? - bulk surveillance is useless for prevention there's just too much of it.
We don't need these reports to know the police and other organisations with access will abuse the data. We have human nature and history to teach us all we need on the subject.
Only share what you absolutely must. The reasons to obfuscate and purposefully give false information when possible are plentiful and sound. From protecting yourself from unnecessary span and "market research" firms to trolling and plain abuse by the government.
All these real ID and real name attempts by different companies and bodies will never convince me. If the police force that is supposed to be of a higher than average moral stature abuse it I have no doubt that companies like FB, MS and all the rest with no exceptions are doing things they should not.
My mail, email, social media, phone records etc. It's all my private information. Wanna read which amazing value loan offer I got yesterday? get a fucking warrant!
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
So they are now looking for replacement of those people, right?
Because where I work if I would do that I would get fired on the spot with no rights to any unemployment benefits as it would be looked at as a serious offence similar to theft or fraude.
Here how that went down with an ex-cow orker:
Was asked into the office to explain what he did and why. This was his one and only chance to defend himself in the company. Answer was not satisfactory, so IT manager got the 'go' to press the button and remove all his access. Security guard and his N+1 escorted him to his desk so he could take his personal belongings and nothing else. It was verified what he took and then he was escorted out of the building.
He was not allowed to talk to anybody inside the building. Pay
A standard would be like this (to show the difference)
Get asked into the office and told you are let go. The company I work for has a policy to make it effective the day itself. You can get your at ease, write a farewell email if you so desire and chat a bit with your co-workers and leave when you want. Your severance pay will be paid with the next payment and will be between 6 weeks and much longer.
So as this is the police who are there to protect us (and our privacy) I assume they were all fired, right? (Holding my breath for a yes. Turning a bit blue now.)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Any access to confidential/otherwise classified information comes with two stipulations:
1: Do you have the appropriate clearance for the information? In this case, yes, the cops generally do have clearance to access data in their databases.
2: Do you have a need-to-know? In this case, nope, they don't.
Merely having clearance to access data doesn't give carte blanche to access anything you want. Sadly, they'll likely get administrative slaps on the wrist, if that.
"one Metropolitan Police officer found the name of a victim so funny that he attempted to take a photo of the driving license and send it to his friend over Snapchat."
Peter Ian Staker?
Chaucer is not incomprehensible. Difficult, challenging yes.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
It’s very disappoint when policemen use their employment status for racket. Every offending cop must be punished. How can we live in a world where civilians’ defenders break the low? Police officers don't all grow up in the same environments. There's many different reasons why a person may choose to become a cop. They come from different families and regions. And they are all different thoughts and needs. I suppose that dozens of police officers work for hide behind the badge and exercise power. And this percentage grows every year not only in UK, but on a world-wide.
Quick we need more police to police the police and then police to police those police.