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Typo In IP Address Led To an Innocent Father's Arrest For Paedophilia (buzzfeed.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fault-in-our-types dept.

An anonymous reader has shared a shocking story about the arrest of Nigel Lang by the British police for a crime he didn't commit. It all happened because of a typo, according to a report. From the report: On a Saturday morning in July 2011, Nigel Lang, then aged 44, was at home in Sheffield with his partner and their 2-year-old son when there was a knock at the door. He opened it to find a man and two women standing there, one of whom asked if he lived at the address. When he said he did, the three strangers pushed past him and one of the women, who identified herself as a police officer, told Lang and his partner he was going to be arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. [...] He was told that when police requested details about an IP address connected to the sharing of indecent images of children, one extra keystroke was made by mistake, sending police to entirely the wrong physical location. But it would take years, and drawn-out legal processes, to get answers about why this had happened to him, to force police to admit their mistake, and even longer to begin to get his and his family's lives back on track. Police paid Lang 60,000 British Pound ($73,500) in compensation last autumn after settling out of court, two years after they finally said sorry and removed the wrongful arrest from his record.

5 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. familyâ(TM)s by ArchieBunker · · Score: 3, Informative

    Fuck how long has Slashdot been around and they still can't fix this shit? familyâ(TM)s familyâ(TM)sfamilyâ(TM)s This is seriously the only time in my many years on the internet I have not seen a website unable to render text correctly.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    1. Re:familyâ(TM)s by slinches · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I recall, not having the option to edit was an intentional decision. Since this site is about the users having technical threaded discussions, it makes sense to make the posts fixed as it preserves the integrity of the discussion (i.e. no going back to edit out the part where you were wrong)

      --
      Knowledge Brings Fear
  2. Re:Buzzfeed is fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your Google-Fu is pathetic - http://www.hertfordshiremercur...

  3. Score:0, Offtopic ? by jerome · · Score: 1, Informative

    Really ?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)

  4. Archibald Buttle by laing · · Score: 1, Informative

    I'm surprised the parent was moderated down. This incident bears a striking similarity to the plot of Brazil. I guess this means that Great Britain (and the rest of the western world) have become "bureaucratic, totalitarian government is reminiscent of the government depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four".