Five bods wrongly cuffed thanks to bungled comms snooping in UK UK cops and spook agencies wrongly fingered five people as criminals after seizing data about their communications, according to a new report. The Interception of Communications Commissioner's latest dossier [PDF] gave examples of intelligence data used to seize drugs and firearms, stop illegal waste dumping and in one …
"In another error, police were sent to an address where they wrongly believed a child had threatened to harm him or herself."
I have personally dealt with something similar. A user in a chat room became concerned that another user was attempting suicide. They contacted their local police in Australia. The Australian police tracked down the IP (this will have involved a third party) and traced it to the UK. They then contacted Scotland Yard with the information.
Scotland Yard contacted the ISP with the information. The ISP called me at 3:00am to get the details of who had that IP at that time. For security reasons, account information is not accessible remotely so I had to drive in, track it down through the logs and them associate it with an account. The details were then passed on to Scotland Yard who no doubt passed it onto the local police force.
Information was exchanged at many points and passed through many hands. Any transcription or lookup error could have easily resulted in the police knocking on the wrong door. It is hardly surprising they get a couple wrong.
Bootnote: Did the user attempt or even succeed with the suicide? I have no idea but the first thing I did was ping the address and got this response:
x.x.x.x is alive.
"This will wind up the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" brigade" says Andrew Moore. Does that mean that he's for or against data snooping? Sounds from the "wind up" part as if he's not worried if HIS data is slurped and distinctly scornful of those who may protest, so I assume he's in favour. I reckon if HE was in the dock, wrongfully accused due to plod's blundering, the story would be a little different. Snooping and lack of privacy has got way beyond a joke.
The Terrorists have finally won when the Government makes the populace afraid to live their lives.
Yes, there are acts of murder & mayhem but terrorism is really in the mind and the goverment WANTS us to be afraid so they can control us even more than they do now.
I remember an old SF short story from Asimov or Astounding where people became so afraid of plague and terrorism that they never left home, had all supplies delivered by the tube, lived in sealed houses, conducted life over some form of video etc.
I think the bastards may eventually cause this to happen if they scare people enough.
The fact is that NOTHING or NO ONE can protect you 100% of the time.
"Don't fight it son. Confess quickly! If you hold out too long you could jeopardize your credit rating. "
Using another marketing term, if we assume 5 nines reliability, that still means a 0.001% error rate. Some will be innocent people being falsely accused while others will be guilty people being let off. Even if the reliability rate remains the same, the more data is collected, the more mistakes will be made. However the reliability rate seems to be tending more to 9 fives instead as more and more people are required to handle and process oodles of useless information about innocent people just going about their daily business. Quite apart from the civil liberties issues, this is a massive waste of time and money that could be spent on something more useful.
Given that the UK doesn't compensate innocent people incarcerated for years, these 'errors' won't cost much.
At one time, when I was young, parents would say if you need help - find a Plod. Scotland Yard was actually respected - now, just another bunch of bag men.
These days Plod ARE the problem - crooks in uniform.
If the system is so good, why weren't the crooked Plod caught selling information. Why? Because it was, and is, ineffective.
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