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Across US, Police Officers Abuse Confidential Databases (ap.org)
Sadie Gurman and Eric Tucker, reporting for Associated Press:Police officers across the country misuse confidential law enforcement databases to get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work, an Associated Press investigation has found. Criminal-history and driver databases give officers critical information about people they encounter on the job. But the AP's review shows how those systems also can be exploited by officers who, motivated by romantic quarrels, personal conflicts or voyeuristic curiosity, sidestep policies and sometimes the law by snooping. In the most egregious cases, officers have used information to stalk or harass, or have tampered with or sold records they obtained. No single agency tracks how often the abuse happens nationwide, and record-keeping inconsistencies make it impossible to know how many violations occur. But the AP, through records requests to state agencies and big-city police departments, found law enforcement officers and employees who misused databases were fired, suspended or resigned more than 325 times between 2013 and 2015. They received reprimands, counseling or lesser discipline in more than 250 instances, the review found.
Power without oversight is being abused? For real? That must be a first in human history!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, funny. Except all these databases keep getting approved by frightened idiots afraid of "the browns" who frankly don't believe their police will ever actually use the unconstitutional powers they've given them against THEM.
Indeed it is, which is why I make a point of adding noise to such databases whenever possible.
Anything I'm not legally required to enter correctly, I could (and often am) just making stuff up. Transpose digits in a number here, get a birthdate wrong there, accidentally mistype a middle initial somewhere else, lie about the name of my first pet, etc.
Better to not let the data be collected in the first place, of course, but increasing the noise level helps a little.
People with power and everybody else are like children.
If your kid steals a cookie and you don't do anything, he will keep stealing cookies. He then will not steal them, but just take them. First you ask, then you beg and then you yell. He will still take the cookies.
Put that kid on a timeout once and 99% of the kids will stop stealing cookies. The other 1% needs to be learned in other ways. But what will happen is if you put these together, the 99% will be an influence of the 1% and prevent the 1% of stealing the cookie.
What have these kids learned? They have learned that there will be consequences. To be fair, sometimes the consequences are worth it. I would gladly stand in timeout for a GREAT cookie.
However never getting a reprimand is the cause of the problem of escalated cookie stealing.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
probably none...
Probably. 9 Horrifying Botched Police Raids
I work at a hospital. We audit people's access to medical records. You can be, and people have been, fired for looking at their own medical record or the medical records of their minor children when that access was made in a way that does not directly relate to their job. You are required to ask for the information the same as any other patient.
If only we could spread that kind of accountability and auditing...
Somehow all the Trumpies on here are going crow at the injustice of this kind of abuse yet fail to see how it is directly analogous to the Stop and Frisk tactics that their hero repeatedly and strenuously advocated during Monday's debate....
A nation-wide one that permanently keeps track of the psycho bullies that do all that the TFA mentions, along with the more generally-accepted assaults and murders they conduct that are rarely punished. Most of the time, these a-holes are told if they resign, they won't be prosecuted. Then, they just move across the country, or even just one desperate little burg over and they setup up their sadistic snuff career all over again.
We talk about serial killers and offenders, but the ones we need to talk about AND TRACK are the serial abusers in LEO.
You display ignorance and a misunderstanding of statistics.
Police are not angels, they are human beings. They are almost EXACTLY as honest as your average employed civilian. Studies show that 96% of them are not criminals, with another approximately 10% doing unethical but not clearly illegal things (such as 'not following protocal').
You look at that and stupidly say wow, 96% is great.
The rest of us look at that say 4% crooked means one in every 25 cops is an outright theif, and 10% shadey means that if you walk in to a police station and you will see a shady cop in every single squad room.
We realize we need to write the laws based on those 4%, not the 96%.
We also realize that that 96% - they are not the ones that end up shooting unarmed civilians. When a cop hits the news for questionable behavior, the odds are not 4% crooked or even 10% shady, but more like 30% crooked and 70% shady.
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Pretty sure male hookers are also generally looked down upon.
Am I just paranoid, or does it seem that everywhere personal data is collected, it is abused?
You are not paranoid. Neither were the framers of the U.S. Constitution who built in protections against such abuse. Alas, irrational fear on the part of those elected by, and who then swore to defend the rights of, the citizens, have been steadily chipping away at those protections. The terrorists have won.
Access to LEADS is regularly AUDITED. People who misuse it are routinely prosecuted.
What do you mean by "prosecuted" and what fraction of people who misuse it actually get "prosecuted"?
By "routinely prosecuted" you could mean that there is a regular (e.g. monthly or yearly) prosecution for misuse. But that doesn't say anything about how often people are discovered misusing it. For example, if you have 4 cases a day of discovered misuse, but 99% of those get a slap on the wrist and only 1% get prosecuted, you're still talking about 1 prosecution a month, which from the outside looks to be "routine prosecution for misuse".
You can never prevent misuse, but you can hold users accountable for their use of the system.
Agreed, but how accountable are they being held? Sure you can audit access (even AUDIT at the more strenuous all-caps level :-), but if only the egregious misuses are ever prosecuted, then everyone quickly figures out what does or does not rise to the level of a prosecutable offence, and everything that falls safely below that is viewed with a "yeah, you're not supposed to, but the worst that happens if you get caught is a reprimand". (I'm sure you can come up with a number of examples in your workplace of things which are technically against the rules, but everyone does anyway because they're no or weak enforcement. *cough* Slashdotting *cough*)
To make the rules stick, you need to be serious about enforcement. For example, the place I work is associated with a hospital (no patient contact, though). In orientation they were *very* clear about the fact that trying to access patient records for any reason other than to treatment (including accessing records for patients you aren't treating) is grounds for *immediate* termination. I don't doubt there are doctors and nurses who let curiosity get the better of them, but if they're discovered, their ass hits the pavement.
That's kind of like the catholic church defense, where they say priests aren't statistically more likely to sexually offend than anyone else. Well, OK, sure, but really? They can't just shoot for good enough when they have extraordinary power/access.
Also, those 96% are only good guys if you don't count how they won't "rat" on their brothers in blue and will defend them in spite of obvious evidence.
I'm not going to comment on the issue of prostitution.
But as far as the social stigma or difference between a male that sleeps with many women vs a female with many men: it is much more difficult for a guy to get sex on demand with many women Most men want it, but only the top tier can obtain it. Meanwhile, even an average looking woman could find a different partner every night of the week, should she desire, simply by sitting at the bar.
A key that opens every lock is a master key. A lock that's opened by every key is a shifty lock.