UK Police Investigate Alleged Phorm Lunch With Officer

twoheadedboy writes "City of London Police are looking into claims one of its officers was given hospitality by Phorm months before the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided to not take the company or BT, which was using the software, to court. BT was trialling Phorm, which uses uses cookies to build a profile of users' habits and interests based on websites they visit, in 2006 and 2007, attracting the scorn of privacy campaigners. After much back and forth, the CPS dropped the case in April 2011. Now, privacy campaigner Alex Hanff, who discovered a document appearing to show an officer had been taken to lunch by Phorm in 2010, wants the case to be reopened."

Not the Met

[Kupfernigk]

This was the City of London police, who are traditionally less prone to corruption than the Met*. Because they investigate sensitive fraud cases and the like, and because many of the criminals in the City have vast resources, the expected standard of police behaviour is much higher. If this officer did not file a proper report on the lunch, he should have done. (I don't know whether he did or not, so I have no opinion on that aspect of the matter.)

*To understand the Metropolitan Police, read the history of the Praetorian Guard in Rome. Boris Johnson knows his classics, and I suspect that is one reason why he fired the head of the Met soon after taking office.