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."
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I'd say more News of the World has won.
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Re:the terrorists... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:the terrorists... (Score:4, Insightful)
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. ...
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,
Why don't you think the 800 cases aren't just the tip of the iceberg in the same way the phone tapping investigation turned out to be? After all cops have a hell of a lot more solidarity among themselves than reporters do and thus much less incentive to rat out another cop.
Anyone caught looking things up for personal reasons are sacked and sometimes prosecuted.
The problem is in the catching. It is completely impractical to check all of those audit logs unless something else happens to bring a person under investigation. As long as they keep their nose clean and stay away from looking up any "high profile" information like celebrities or major public crimes no one will even look at their audit trail much less put in all of the effort to determine if each search was legitimate. Misuse of the database is essentially unpoliceable.
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.
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It's not just in the UK.
Here in Winnipeg, Canada I know a cop who routinely looks up "the dirt" for friends. Admittedly he's done it for me once, but I felt a bit guilty (it was about my current gf I met 11 years ago) and haven't asked him to do it since.
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But if you're not doing anything wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
You have nothing to fear from the authorities!
Right? Right? Helloooo?
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Agreed. Something seems to actually be working. That this is out in the open and people are being caught and punished is all good.
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Call me a cynic, but people are people.
Communism, Socialism, Corporateism, police state, etc. If it can be corrupted or misused in time it will be. The trick is mitigating the corruption and weighing the benefits against the possible downsides.
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Undoing mod - went to select insightful and somehow ended up with redundant, sorry about that Anon.
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Actually, I *do* have something to fear from the authorities even if I've done nothing wrong.
Besides the rampant possibilities of being joe jobbed or falling victim to plain incompetence, I'm not keen on having my precious tax dollars wasted on innocent me when there are REAL CROOKS out there to go after.
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No, he got the joke, he just didn't find it very funny. He recognised the old line and pointed out the fallacy of the meme, thereby whooshing over your shallow, sarcastic head.
In other words, he effectively dispelled the joke.
Re:But if you're not doing anything wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite right.
Saying that it's one's patriotic duty to bend over conveniently neglects the negative side effects of being the subject of police attention even if completely innocent.
* Waste of taxpayer money for the time spent in barking up the wrong tree
* Inconvenience to the detained
* Damage to reputation among bystanders that are observing
* Other things I could easily mention
The only time I'd welcome being investigated is if I was already under suspicion and getting checked is going to do more good than harm. Otherwise, it's a waste of everyone's time.
Especially for the government, which has enough pork in the budget as it is without police wasting precious man-hours stepping on our rights.
Re:But if you're not doing anything wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
I will never trust ANY authority and I have taught my children the same
+1 ironic?
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Like that bald headed pantload Dr Phil said "People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing". As a trite little saying (he's full of those) it seems innocuous, but when you put a little historical perspective on it you see that it is yet another door way into absolute dictatorship!
"passing sensitive information to criminal gangs" (Score:3)
And, perhaps, tabloid reporters? Or is that the same thing?
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And, perhaps, tabloid reporters? Or is that the same thing?
Please, don't insult gangbangers
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Strangely no. For some years the police database has been the one database the tabloids won't touch. Everything else up to and including medical records is fine but going for the police database has historically resulted in the police carrying out investigations and no one wants that.
See Nick Davies's book flat earth news for details.
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Yes I'm not entirely sure what to make of that. Its also a a little odd in the sense that generally any worthwhile crime reporter will have enough contacts with the police to get tipped of to interesting stories without having to make payment beyond the odd pint of beer.
storing personally identifiable information 101 (Score:2)
1) if you collect data the data will be used.
2) reread 1. until you get it.
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sorry, I don't do analogies...
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.
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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.
This should be changing soon (if the politicians ever get around to that Protection of Freedoms Bill) because the Courts (now both the ECHR and Supreme Court) have said that this is illegal. Unfortunately, the court decided not to do anything (like punishing the police, or demanding that data be destroyed) until Parliament had their say. ... and people say the Courts have no respect for Parliamentary Sovereignty.
[If you're really interested, I wrote something up for PPUk on this, here [pirateparty.org.uk].]
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Right, I'll just choose never to be suspected of a crime. How could I be so blind?
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Right, I'll just choose never to be suspected of a crime. How could I be so blind?
Make sure you also choose to prevent suspicion ever falling on any of your neighbours, friends, acquaintances, workmates, or people who hang out in the same bars or social clubs as you. Otherwise, you're fair game for the DNA database.
It's all up to you, remember...
Surprise! (Score:4)
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The future looks bright! (Score:1)
Dem Cops (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, you Americans should really rein in your abusive cops. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Its like you are living in a police state. You should stop voting for idiots who let this happen.
Oh, wait. Not Americans?
Quis... (Score:1)
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yes, who DOES watch the latin teachers?
(always thought they were the real suspicious ones...)
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Or, to put it another way, 73% of those caught doing something the seriousness of which you acknowledge, are not prosecuted. That's a barely any better than the clear-up rate for burglaries. This is not terribly impressive.
I'm
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... Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
fixed that for you
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OT abuses in the health care industry (Score:3)
Back in college, I had a friend in an undergrad pre-med program who was doing some sort of work in the local hospital. He actually told me, unsolicited, that if I was interested in a girl he'd look her up to see if she had any STDs (I never took him up on the offer). He also wasn't shy about pointing out who had what whenever he spotted people in public. At the time, I just thought it was creepy but I wonder if that was illegal 15 years ago?
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Back in college, I had a friend in an undergrad pre-med program who was doing some sort of work in the local hospital. He actually told me, unsolicited, that if I was interested in a girl he'd look her up to see if she had any STDs (I never took him up on the offer). He also wasn't shy about pointing out who had what whenever he spotted people in public. At the time, I just thought it was creepy but I wonder if that was illegal 15 years ago?
i would imagine the fact that pretty much everywhere medical files are labelled "Medical in confidence" would suggest that yes it was very much breaking the rules... certainly always has been here in Scotland anyways
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Strange, how cattle always wonder about if it is "illegal" and never about if *they* think it's right or wrong.
No, those are not the same, but more and more drift into becoming polar opposites.
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Strange how ACs always have insults
Gotta log access attempts (Score:2)
...and, make sure your employees KNOW that their attempts to access records are logged. Continually cross-reference that info with relevant investigations.
If you don't want it read don't write it down (Score:2)
I keep having this discussion with people again and again.
It does not matter what social, organizational, or legal controls your put in place -
It does not what technical controls, acls, encryption, strong identity validation, etc you put in place -
At some point any information stored will be either abused to facilitate some originally unintended purpose or will be leaked and subsequently abused or published by another party.
-The take home needs to be "think before you store" and we need to tell our politici
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The problem here, though, is that you can't control what OTHER people write down.
Unless your high is of high enough profile to have Nancy Grace talking about it, being accused of a crime is enough to have you convicted or bankrupted in most cases.
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"I keep having this discussion with people again and again".
Perhaps you should write it down?
Attention baying mob: note the convictions (Score:4)
Re:Attention baying mob: note the convictions (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I was going to post something like this.
Corrupt police are being caught, and convicted. It's getting reported. Sure, some holes might need to be closed in terms of accessing their system, or requesting permission to use it, but the fact that these guys aren't getting away with it is a very good thing.
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I have noticed this. Specifically, Walgreens has started scanning licenses for cigs and beer.
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Pleasing (Score:2)
to see that at least they are actually detecting and disciplining breaches, since I was already assuming the worst.
If they were to have the right security and ethical culture, it's not implausible that they have a high detection rate when running a full access log, hopefully cross-referenced to some sort of case allocation log, in which case 900 out of ~242k [telegraph.co.uk] is less than 0.4% of staff in a 3 year period. On the other hand it is possible the 900 is only from audit sampling, in which case since the sample siz