UK Police Database Abuse 'Hugely Intrusive' 88
twoheadedboy writes "Police database abuse has been branded as 'hugely intrusive' after a report showed over 900 officers and staff had breached the Data Protection Act over the last three years. Furthermore, 243 police officers and staff received criminal convictions for breaking laws set down by the DPA. 'Our investigation shows that not only have police employees been found to have run background records checks on friends and possible partners, but some have been convicted for passing sensitive information to criminal gangs and drug dealers,' said Daniel Hamilton, director of the Big Brother Watch."
Re:A NOVEL IDEA: DON'T GET IN THE FUCKING DATABASE (Score:4, Informative)
In the UK, if you are questioned for a major crime, even as a witness, and a DNA sample is taken, you are on the database for life. You don't have to do the crime, you have to live within a few streets of someone might have done the crime.
Re:the terrorists... (Score:5, Informative)
.. have won.
This story is sensationalist scare mongering crap and belongs in the Sun and certainly not here. There are literally millions of people who work for the police in the UK so to quote a figure of 800 incidents over three years suddenly seems pretty insignificant. My partner works for the police and has advised me that every record they check, leaves a log of who they are and what crime they are looking it up in relation to and why. Anyone caught looking things up for personal reasons are sacked and sometimes prosecuted. That's where the 800 and 243 figures come from.
People are people and yes it would be nice if the police and support staff were immune to the case of human stupidity. Personally I am far more concerned about higher-up, more serious incidents like the first investigation into phone tapping scandal which found little only 'isolated cases' and only 2 people involved when clearly it turns out over 4000 cases and potentially, nearly every British newspaper. The head of the first investigation then walked into a well paid job for the very people he was investigating with the blessing of the UK government and no questions were asked.
Statistics, numeracy, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
There are literally millions of people who work for the police in the UK
Really? Considering that working for the police in the UK involves being a member of the UK labor force, which is just over 31million [wikipedia.org] persons, you're suggesting that at least 1 in 30 of them is working for the police. And that's interpreting your "literally millions" as being just 1 million.
Actually, adding together the police force sizes [wikipedia.org] for England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, one gets a total of 164,580 which is about one sixth of a million.