Two UK Police Forces Unlawfully Recorded Phone Calls Via App, Watchdog Finds (theguardian.com) 14
Bruce66423 shares a report from the Guardian: Two police forces have been reprimanded by Britain's data watchdog after officers unlawfully recorded more than 200,000 phone conversations using an app originally intended for hostage negotiators. The automatic recordings, made over several years, included 'highly sensitive' conversations with victims, witnesses and perpetrators of suspected crimes, according to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The app, called Another Call Recorder (ACR), recorded all incoming and outgoing calls and was originally intended for use by a small number of officers at Surrey and Sussex forces. However, it was downloaded on to the work phones of more than 1,000 staff members.
It has now been withdrawn from use and the recordings, other than those considered to be evidential material, have been destroyed, according to the ICO. The watchdog said it considered issuing a million euro fine to both forces but opted for the reprimand to reduce the impact on public services. Police officers that downloaded the app were unaware all calls would be recorded, the watchdog said, and people were not informed their conversations were being taped.
It has now been withdrawn from use and the recordings, other than those considered to be evidential material, have been destroyed, according to the ICO. The watchdog said it considered issuing a million euro fine to both forces but opted for the reprimand to reduce the impact on public services. Police officers that downloaded the app were unaware all calls would be recorded, the watchdog said, and people were not informed their conversations were being taped.
And What Are The Penalties For This? (Score:2)
The Guardian article says that only 1 potential case at Court would have been affected by this massive invasion of privacy.
But there is no indication of any penalties being applied to the police.
So the police get off with a mea cupla "we removed the app" explanation and that's it.
Apparently in the UK if you want to truly get away with crime you ought to be a copper.
"Sorry mate. Won't happen again. Yuck Yuck Yuck
How do you punish a whole police force? (Score:3)
To fine them - which the regulator did suggest but drew back from - merely punishes the residents of the areas they police. That is hardly fair. It's hard to find a sensible solution to this issue where there is no one person really responsible.
Re:How do you punish a whole police force? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a potential solution that is fair to the public and that is to make those responsible for the wrongdoing personally responsible for their actions. The idea that nobody in the police force knew they were doing wrong is incredulous. If nobody did know they were doing wrong then those that authorized the illegal activity without ensuring that they knew it was actually legal are culpable for dereliction of duty.
One of the biggest problems in western society is the total lack of personal responsibility in situations like this. Only when individuals suffer consequences for poor decision-making will people start thinking before they act and make good decisions.
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The defense "I did not know this was illegal" does not work for ordinary people. It should never, ever work for the police, which needs to be held to a higher standard.
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Given that many police officers have sexual assault allegations against them, and their colleagues rarely report their misdeeds, it's a systemic issue with UK police forces. Those organizations need to be reformed.
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Given that many police officers have sexual assault allegations against them, and their colleagues rarely report their misdeeds, it's a systemic issue with UK police forces. Those organizations need to be reformed.
We keep hearing "it's just a few bad apples". The senior officers appear to have forgotten the rest of the expression "one bad apple spoils the barrel". Sure, there may be only a (small?) minority of coppers who are actively crooked, but the blind-eye culture has tainted the lot of them. The barre
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I don't think the claim that it's just a few bad apples holds up at all. It's clear there is a culture of abusing that power, and while not all of them may be perverts, even the ones who aren't are likely abusing it in other less serious ways.
That's generally how these cultures develop, everyone is a bit dodgy so they won't report the serious stuff for fear of their minor stuff being discovered too.
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Indeed. Even the ones who aren't abusing power themselves are turning a blind eye to those who are. That really doesn't work for a police force.
Lets start calling criminals criminals, shall we? (Score:2)
Lets stop calling the police doing illegal and criminal things "unlawful". Lets call these people criminals, because they are.
This sounds like an MDM fuckup (Score:2)
From TFA:
“There was no means at that time of restricting use of the app and, unintentionally, it was enabled for all staff to download without appropriate guidance in place. When enabled, the app records and stores all phone calls made in the mobile device,” they said.
Sounds like they enabled this in their "managed" app store but didn't intend for it to be available to all staff. I'm guessing this was someone in the IT Department responsible for MDM just set this to All Users instead of assigning to a specific group.
Honestly, this just sounds like incompetence or a failure of business processes, rather than a nefarious plan to record hundreds of phone conversations (locally, on each handset!).
Should there be better oversight and management of this stuff? Of cour