UK Police Force Loses 3 Years of Body Camera Footage (independent.co.uk) 61
Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this report from the Independent:
South Yorkshire Police (SYP) has apologised after revealing more than three years' worth of officer body cam footage has been deleted from its computer systems. SYP said it had referred itself to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) after the footage, recorded between July 2020 and May 2023, was found to be missing. The force initially said the incident had been caused by a "significant and unexplained reduction" in stored data on its computer systems and later clarified that the data had been "deleted" and not hacked.
Around 69 cases have been identified as potentially affected by the loss of data and the force said it was working closely with the victims and Crown Prosecution Service. The cases range from cannabis possession through to domestic abuse and sexual offences, SYP told The Independent... Urgent work, led by digital forensic experts, is underway to recover the footage, it added...
It comes just weeks after a major data beach in Northern Ireland, where the force mistakenly published the personal details of officers in response to a freedom of information request. Norfolk and Suffolk police forces, in another freedom of information request incident, released the personal details of more than 1,000 people, including crime victims.
Around 69 cases have been identified as potentially affected by the loss of data and the force said it was working closely with the victims and Crown Prosecution Service. The cases range from cannabis possession through to domestic abuse and sexual offences, SYP told The Independent... Urgent work, led by digital forensic experts, is underway to recover the footage, it added...
It comes just weeks after a major data beach in Northern Ireland, where the force mistakenly published the personal details of officers in response to a freedom of information request. Norfolk and Suffolk police forces, in another freedom of information request incident, released the personal details of more than 1,000 people, including crime victims.
"Loses" as in "dog ate my homework" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Loses" as in "dog ate my homework" (Score:5, Funny)
So convenient if you happen to "lose" evidence of your wrong-doing...
Not really, for one thing this is South Yorkshire, most of the crime there involves sheep and whenever it's something more serious it usually goes unsolved because even Scotland Yard can't figure out what the Yorkies are saying. Plus, violent crime isn't really a huge problem over there because English people generally vent their frustrations through the writing of strongly worded letters. The ones predisposed to vent their every frustration through sustained gunfire moved to the Americas back in the 17th century.
Re: (Score:3)
Not really, for one thing this is South Yorkshire, most of the crime there involves sheep and whenever
There have also been the "grooming" scandals in Rotherham, and a sexual offenses scandal that involved an Member of Parliament and a strange lack of action when reported.
Re: (Score:2)
And I'm fairly sure some really strongly worded letters were written about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really, for one thing this is South Yorkshire, most of the crime there involves sheep and whenever
There have also been the "grooming" scandals in Rotherham, and a sexual offenses scandal that involved an Member of Parliament and a strange lack of action when reported.
There was also that slightly annoying global pandemic...in case anyone obviously forgot an entire period of questionable law-abiding and forced compliance that would be quite convenient to sweep under the delete button.
Re: (Score:2)
So convenient if you happen to "lose" evidence of your wrong-doing...
Sounds like they hired the same people who handled the Jan 6th text messages for the US Secret Service ...
Re: (Score:2)
How do public entities preserve text messages for records retention that never traverse their network?
Re:"Loses" as in "dog ate my homework" (Score:5, Informative)
Losing one specific video reeks of corruption. Losing everything for the past several years just seems like typical incompetence.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If you blow away three years of stuff in an "accident" then it's great cover for any little bits in there you didn't want seen.
Even better, even if they do work out that it was done deliberately, every single officer who worked during that time is a potential suspect meaning that the chance that they nail you as being responsible becomes negligible.
Re: (Score:2)
Or a great way to get rid of a really damning video.
Re: (Score:3)
Losing one specific video reeks of corruption. Losing everything for the past several years just seems like typical incompetence.
Where would you hide a tree? In a forest.
Re: "Loses" as in "dog ate my homework" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's certainly possible that it was done intentionally to coverup some misconduct by the police force or someone "important" that they happened to interact with. However, most of the body can footage is probably not something the officers would fee the need to hide. If you've ever watched some of the stuff that gets made available through FoIA requests or the equivalent for your country then you'd realize that 90% of it is utterly mundane and uninteresting, and that it's surprising the police don't beat more people because a lot of the time they're dealing with drunk idiots who can't seem to help making matters worse for themselves by being absolute bell ends.
Losing one specific video reeks of corruption. Losing everything for the past several years just seems like typical incompetence.
This, never ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.
PC Careless was too busy eating a pasty and accidentally hit delete on the wrong folder. The fact that police IT (the public sector in general) is so badly underfunded means that controls weren't set up to prevent it nor were backups in place to ensure that even if those controls didn't work, the data would still not be lost.
Policing in general in the UK takes a very human approach, If a copper is to pull you up on something they'
Re: (Score:2)
Well, (assuming the UK has an equivalent) isn't the 5th amendment applicable here? Compelling people to provide evidence against themselves can lead to all kinds of abuse.
Re: (Score:2)
In the UK, you can refuse to speak to the police, but juries can be told that you refused to speak.
Re: (Score:2)
The only way this can affect your trial is if "you do not mention something you later rely on in court".
Re: (Score:2)
There is no "UK" legal system as the legal system in Scotland is quite distinct from England's.
Re: (Score:2)
I can only assume there are gravitational anomalies in that part of the country. It certainly would explain this and how the CCTV footage of Zayna Iman's alleged rape by police was selectively lost, leaving police unable to explain what happened during a journey in a police van that should have taken ten minutes, yet took almost 90 minutes. Also a curious lack of body cam footage from an officer seen entering the van.
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
"A marvellous winter": "Yes Minister" (Score:5, Insightful)
James Hacker : How am I going to explain the missing documents to "The Mail"?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Well, this is what we normally do in circumstnces like these.
James Hacker : [reads memo] This file contains the complete set of papers, except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967...
James Hacker : Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files.
how long is that data to be saved? rotated? (Score:2)
how long is that data to be saved before being rotated?
Now if they did not mark some videos as keep them they may get removed to make way for new videos.
Bum. (Score:2)
I live in Lincolnshire.
My errors of judgement will still be on file.
What's 30 miles between friends?
I have worked on these systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Not in the UK, though.
So the standard was this - when a case needed video that was on a police-controlled system, the cameras and time ranges were documented and that video was locked against deletion.
That video system had (off site) backups.
It didn't stop there - copies were made (early days on DVD, later on flash drives) and given to the primary investigating officer to keep with the physical case notes.
But wait, there's more! Additional copies were made and delivered to the Crown (early days on DVD, then flash, then on the court's private cloud storage solution).
There's still more! This was outside my area, but I believe the Crown is obligated to provide copies of evidence to the defence.
So what in the hell are the UK cops doing? Here it would take a literal conspiracy between multiple organizations, at least one of which would be extremely unlikely to cooperate. How is it even possible that they lost this data?
Re: (Score:2)
> How is it even possible that they lost this data?
Same way Epstein hanged himself with paper sheets.
Probably somebody important, maybe Andrew, was didling a kid and got caught on the bodycam.
Somehow all the backups are unrecoverable and the person they fired for it has an unusually large monthly pension.
Oh, wait, not all that has happened yet.
Re: (Score:1)
So what in the hell are the UK cops doing?
This is the UK. Some years ago, during David Cameron's coalition government a consultant was called in to look at cost optimization in Yourshire Police IT. The consultant was asked to find ways to reduce costs. After suggesting a number of things involving better training and buying one new system to replace twenty systems installed in the 1990s, at the end of her report, under great pressure she looked into the redundancy of backups and noticed that there were 10 inconsistent copies of the police action da
Re:I have worked on these systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod this up and the other down. Some nasty editing errors:
This is the UK. Some years ago, during David Cameron's coalition government a consultant was called in to look at cost optimization in Yourshire Police IT. The consultant was asked to find ways to reduce costs. After suggesting a number of things involving better training and buying one new system to replace twenty systems installed in the 1990s, at the end of her report, under great pressure she looked into the redundancy of backups and noticed that there were 10 inconsistent copies of the police action data (which now includes the cameras). Realizing it was a terrible idea, she clearly stated that the first thing to do was to ensure that there was a proper consistent, fully protected offsite backup of all the data held by an independent third party on write once media. Then, under great pressure from her manager, she pointed out that if, instead of the courts, the chief constable, the IT department, the forensics department and the public records department each having a separate copy of the data, they all used a single copy held directly by the department responsible for maintaining body cameras and unloading them then there would be a big cost saving.
Naturally, when this was implemented, the cost savings part was seen as a high priority and was implemented in the first stage implementation. The reliable backup solution was seen as a stretch goal for the first implementation stage, however that turned out unrealistic and, in fact, it never made it even before the fifth implementation iteration at which point further development was cancelled to reduce costs.
Some people think that the BOFH [theregister.com]stories [bjash.com] are humor and don't realize that this is actually a documentary of an ideal well balanced part of British IT that the rest of the country aspire to.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought the last line kind of gave it away. In the UK the use of \s tags is considered a sign of weakness.
Re:I have worked on these systems (Score:4, Informative)
In North America, the most common system is cloud based - most forces use Axon cameras (formerly Taser corp - yes, the same people make body cameras).
Those are uploaded daily from the body cam to the Axon cloud server where they're kept and stored and backed up.
I don't normally advocate cloud usage, but it seems for things like this, the third party storage and logging would be ideal. If a cop "forgets" to upload video, the absence of such will be logged (there is no record of the device uploading the video of that day). Requests to delete information would have paper trails and logs, and likely it's still present and "recoverable"
The problem is, it's expensive and I think Axon does allow you to have a local storage server if you don't want to pay for cloud storage.
Competence or other (Score:2)
These people clearly live in a different reality from me. Anyone need a competent "back up person" for hire? I'm talented in picking up the fucking phone and shopping for a data archive warehouse, requisitioning a tape drive and creating logistics to support it and a back up process. Issue the visa and I'll do it for free. I could do the most shitty job and it'd still be
Re: (Score:1)
Video filesize is massive though. Some forces can generate hundreds of hours of footage per day. It's mind boggling to me thinking about how to store that in a usable quality much less back it up and maintain those backups for many years..
Re:Competence or other (Score:5, Informative)
You back it up to AWS S3 glacier storage where it is relatively inexpensive to store and requires no actual work to keep the systems maintained. Cold storage is a few bucks per month per terabyte. Retrieval costs can add up, but you should only need to retrieve in a rare emergency, e.g. when an idiot deletes your local copies.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking of a small local municipality with the grand idea of putting two cameras on every traffic light suspension (8 per intersection), each recording 24/7. That's hundreds cameras and depending on compression such that things on the footage can be identifiable we're talking several terabytes per week. The records retention laws that I have to deal with weren't written with video in mind but a liberal reading of those would require all of that footage be maintained for 3-5 years. You're still undersel
Re: (Score:2)
Intersection cameras typically don't record video. They take a few still shots when there is movement. The better ones take a few still shots only when a violation is detected, e.g. running a red light. So the storage requirements shouldn't be that severe if done right.
Cost is a few bucks per terabyte for glacier storage. Let's assume 5 terabytes a week (worse case using your example) at $5 per terabyte per month (that's over the going rate, but it makes for simple math). So 5 terabytes @ $5 for 52 wee
Re: (Score:2)
Oops, left a step out. $1,300 per year that is kept. Still not a lot.
Re: (Score:2)
Recording 5 terabytes every week means that the recordings for the whole year total 52*5 = 260 terabytes of data.
If it's charged at $5 per terabyte per month, then keeping that 260 TB for one year will cost $5 * 12 months * 260 TB = $15,500
Re: (Score:2)
It seems a drop in the ocean given UK police spending on 'diversity' commissars.
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/... [bigleaguepolitics.com]
Re: (Score:1)
This isn't a hypothetical, I'm familiar with such a system in a town with less than 50k population that is exactly as I described and it records video 24/7 at around 8-10fps. They are accumulating a lot more than 5tb per week. A lot more.
Re: (Score:1)
I'll also add this story is about body-cams too which unquestionably are not motion-activated, record in much higher framerates and resolution. Storage and retention is not as trivial or cheap as you suggest. Lawyers request dated footage every single day.
Re: (Score:1)
Sorry for the triple reply but I'll also also add that you can't just upload evidenciary video to random cloud services. There are legal requirements, certifications, etc relating to privacy laws. I don't know all the specifics but another local law enforcement agency I'm familiar with uploads their body-cam footage to a service provided by the camera vendor and the DA has to access it from there and also download to their own local storage for use in court.
Re: (Score:2)
Stuff that must remain readily accessible is different from archiving. I realize stuff needs to be accessible for a certain period of time, but that isn't forever.
Also, AWS has storage for government agencies that is handled different than the business grade stuff. I do not, however, know how much that costs. Obviously not storage for secret or top secret stuff, but storage that is handled in the way required by law for regular government documents.
I'm guessing the camera vendor's service handles backup
There better be prison sentences. (Score:2)
Second, the person that deleted this is arrested, and they give a name of who ordered it, and that person is arrested, and so on until the full story comes out of why this data was deleted.
If I lived there I would demand that everyone there be removed.
Give me a break (Score:2)
They should have only the most minimal custody of the data and shouldn't be responsible for storing and retrieval of that data.
The data should be collected and handled by accredited, bonded, insured professional IT custodians who are contracted to a municipal authority that isn't beholden to the police department.
Any unusual activity by the police regarding the collection and rendition of that data to the appointed custodians should be
How convenient! (Score:2)
I call bullshit (Score:2)
It was done on purpose. There should be backups. If there are no backups, then it was part of a plan to destroy evidence that would make the police look bad.
ACAB.
Cover-up (Score:2)
Re: Cover-up (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So let me understand (Score:2)
How is this even possible? (Score:2)
As someone who has worked with Police, Gov and Enterprise customers I find this near impossible to believe.
Between:
- Backups,
- Redundant storage,
- Ingest systems
- FOI requests
- Court copies
- etc.
I can't honestly fathom how they lost 3 years of vid.
I can understand that they may have destroyed the chain of custody records which would effectively make any video stored junk. As you wouldn't be able to trace who has had contact with the videos. Which means you can with 100% certainty prove the video is not ta
Re: (Score:2)
I can't honestly fathom how they lost 3 years of vid.
It must have all been stashed in a soiled bag that once held a copper's fish & chips lunch.
Someone decided the bag reeked of too much vinegar & grease so they decided to toss it in the nearest bin.
Mistakes DO Happen.
So (Score:2)
So the South Yorkshire Police are being charged with destruction of evidence, right? The cases involved are all defaulting to the other party, right? Justice isn't allowed to be undone by a "sorry, squire, we accidentally deleted the evidence," right?
Deleted Forensics (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Haha. No doubt the logs were also deleted.
Re: (Score:2)
3 years? (Score:2)