Slashdot Mirror
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.
Am I just paranoid, or does it seem that everywhere personal data is collected, it is abused?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
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.
That's *if you get caught*. More likely, if you get caught more than once or twice, or get caught in some really egregious violation (like bulk selling the data).
Perhaps "a significant number" do get caught, but is that 90% or only 1% of the total occurances? I'd lean more towards the latter. What are the odds of getting caught the first time you do it?
"the browns"
what you got against Cleveland?
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.
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...
The solution is pretty simple, but often skipped:
1) The reason for every search should be required and logged by the searcher. Example: "Related to case 12345, this person was a close match to the suspect description given by clerk at robbed market, who was interviewed by officer 84923 on Aug 7th." (In practice short-cut lingo can be used to reduce typing.)
2) The logs be randomly spot-checked by an auditor(s) who verifies the reasons given by interviewing the person(s) who searched.
3) The depth of the investigation will vary such that some will be pretty thorough. (Not every spot-check can be deep, but make enough deep to keep users on their toes.)
4) Those who've failed past audits or enter poor records are audited more often.
This won't catch every violation, but greatly reduces it because the search-user doesn't know which search will be audited and how deep the audit will be.
The reason this is not implemented is that governments and/or tax-payers don't want to pay for logging features and auditors.
Table-ized A.I.
World hunger is over because you ate today, too. Just because you don't see police brutality doesn't mean it's not infesting every police force in the country like a disease. Follow copblock or similar, watch all the videos. It's non-stop.
Back when I was working at a call center (processing credit applications for several different companies) we had access to credit reports. If we looked up someone's credit report that was not applying for credit, it was immediate termination. I couldn't even look up credit reports for people that had the same last name as myself. If that situation came up, we had to transfer the application to a different service rep.
Years later, I worked at a hospital. They had similar restrictions and consequences regarding patient records due to HIPPA regulations.
The databases in question hold information such as driver licenses, car registration, criminal histories,warrants, missing persons, etc. In Ohio the main law enforcement database is LEADS which also ties into national criminal justice databases, Access to LEADS is regularly AUDITED. People who misuse it are routinely prosecuted. These databases are very important to public safety. You can never prevent misuse, but you can hold users accountable for their use of the system.
[Insert pithy quote here]
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.