back to article Man jailed for snooping on police database

A Northern Irish man has been jailed for nine months for using the police database to get information for terrorists. Aaron Hill, 24, from Randalstown, County Antrim, was a data inputter for the Northern Irish police force. He was found guilty of collecting information likely to be useful to terrorists and misconduct in public …

COMMENTS

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  1. Dennis O'Neill
    FAIL

    Of course...

    ...something like that could NEVER happen with the ID database, the Contactpoint database, the Connecting for Health database, etc, etc, etc, could it?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Proof at last

    These are the people who benefit most from government snooping. The criminals.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    So let me get this right.........

    These 2 people put 100 lives at severe risk and only get 9 months and 1 year sentences respectively ?. What kind of message does that give out . In other words the IRA/Catholics were clearly right NOT to trust the Police ,and they still obviously cant, and that extends to the Judges as well who give such lenient sentences.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How

    did he know these number plates belonged to Catholics? Are the police keeping people religious/world view details in a database now?

    As to the length of his sentence, I imagine that's because there's no evidence they did anything with the information. Quite honestly they could have got as much info by hanging around the churches and writing down number plates and then noting where people lived/worked as they spotted them around town.

  5. Ted Treen
    FAIL

    @Dennis O'Neill

    Well said, Sir.

    I can't really think of anything to add: you put it so well.

  6. The Original Ash
    Thumb Up

    No ID card for me!

    This is the string to the bow we've needed.

  7. John Savard

    Step up personal security?

    Since they have him in custody, and he is convicted of a criminal offence, he should now have no choice but to fully provide the police with all necessary information to find the people to which he gave his information, so they can all be put away, every last one, so that there is no risk to anyone's personal security.

    This is a terrorism-related offense. So the penalty should automatically be life imprisonment, with death and torture being optional at the government's pleasure.

  8. Stuart Van Onselen
    Unhappy

    Sectarian violence?

    Forgive my ignorance, but I had though that NI tribal warfare was largely a thing of the past. Clearly I was mistaken.

  9. Aaron Harris
    Big Brother

    Big Brother

    No one has used the Big Brother Icon...

  10. MinionZero
    Big Brother

    @No one has used the Big Brother Icon...

    I did, but the Thought Police censored it.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Sectarian violence"

    There's a bunch of Romanians who know that sectarian violence is still going. One wonders who thought it would be clever to house people from Romania (a predominantly Catholic country) in a Protestant area.

  12. Eponymous Cowherd
    Big Brother

    Nothing to fear

    Your data is safe with UK.Gov.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    @ Big Brother

    I used the Big Brother icon in my previous comment I have obviously fallen foul of ................................................................BIG BROTHER

    Big Brother please as Big Brother is watching you even if you post as an anonymous coward

  14. FreeTard

    @Anon Cow RE:How

    That's not even an issue, in N. Ireland, the peeps can tell who is catholic or protestant by their name. My wife can tell coz she's a nordie. I still have to ask, so that Paddy Murphy, would he be catholic or proddy then?

    OK that's an obvious one, but you get the idea. Databases are a really bad idea though, especially ones run by government bodies.

  15. Stef 2
    Black Helicopters

    Because he's a Prot not a 'rab

    Why didn't he get shipped off to Gitmo, or whatever the equivalent Bush n Blair shadow prison is these days?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    They play together in a flute band?

    Is that like, 69, or something?

  17. MinionZero
    Big Brother

    So much for nothing to fear...

    This case shows government databases are even putting peoples lives at risk and at the very least crooks are using the data from their own gain at our expense. Yet the government keeps on wanting us all to believe that if we have done nothing wrong, then we have nothing to fear from ever more government databases.

    Its interesting the database building control freaks see the answer must be to add ever more control to protect the ever growing numbers of databases. Its control onto control. Lets add more control. Can they find any solution that doesn't involve seeking ever more ways to control people. It shows their thinking centers on control and its inconceivable to them that their control isn't going to become total control. So as they fail to have total control, so we end up with crooks stealing data for their own gain. Wow, who would have guessed that. Clearly not the myopic narrow minded control freaks. Who are we to fear most? The crooks who steal data for their own gain, or the government and council crooks who lie to us, take our money, and then seek to control us ever more for their own gain? Both the political people and the crooks behaving the same way. Who would have guessed. Two minority groups in society, both control freaks, both seeking to manipulate everyone else for their own gain and both competing with each other to gain control of everyones lives for their own gain. There is a pattern emerging here. The people we need to fear are the control freaks who seek to control others regardless of which group they belong to.

    The fact councils have already sold on a lot of our details for their own gain is reason enough not to ever trust them with yet more information for their own gain. We are being ever more violated by the control freaks for their own gain yet brainwashed by very evident lies its to protect us. It seems its more to protect them from all of us stopping them robbing us of tax payers money. It clearly doesn't protect people when it can be used to exploit people and even worse, as this case shows it can even risk peoples lives.

    The control freaks are the ones we need to fear. So the solution is to side line the control freaks and prevent them gaining power over peoples lives. The control freaks are a small minority in each society and so the answer is for the majority of people to finally stand up to the minority of control freaks, then finally, they will no longer have any power and then finally we can build a fairer and safer world without their greedy manipulation and control.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    The Province

    Ahhh such sweet memories of my childhood come sweeping back with a news story like this: Ulster terrorism, back before the US decided it wasn't cool to sponsor the IRA and gave $$$ by the truckload so innocent people could be blown up in fish shops and shop in pubs, with the usual tit-for-tat reprisals as well. Funny that Bush never mentioned this great by-product of the American Century in his War On Terror speeches...

    Must go - there's a tear in my eye!!

    Black helo for the one that used to hover over Belmont and Sydenham every Sunday morning.

  19. Doug Glass
    Happy

    "Possession of Ammunition"

    Hmmm, interesting. Gotta run; gotta go get some redneck southern pine 4x4 beams to add floor supports for my magazine.

  20. adnim

    I have said this before

    Even the most secure rock solid, bulletproof database, even one that is impossible to hack (should one ever exist) has a fatal flaw... Human operators.

    Humans unlike machines have ideals, drug/alcohol/gambling habits, consumer lust, mortgages, greed etc. etc.

    "Each man has his price Bob, and yours was pretty low"

    Roger Waters

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So when the arrests at the DVLA?

    So this guy took license plate numbers and converted them to addresses..... for free. And the DVLA takes license plate numbers and converts them to addresses... for a small fee.

    So when will we get the DVLA arrests?

    If you've accepted that peoples home addresses are private information, (even useful to terrorists!), then why do we continue to permit the DVLA to hand out that info on request?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    clearly we are in a Risk/Benefit situation here...

    Risk of death and damage to at least 100 people vs ....??

    This shows failures at every level.

    Assessment of the fitness of the operative for the job.

    security clearance processes for operatives

    Systems security monitoring & profiling...

    Have the authorities learnt anything? I doubt it.

    If these sentences were lenient before, what are these.

    One of the main problems with big centralised databases is there maintenance. How many billions will be spent 'serving the machine' before someone says "this is daft" and then tries unsuccessfully to kill it off. It will be unsuccessful because of vested interest and inertia not because it is useful.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Who can you trust......

    Certainly not the police in Northern Ireland. These types of leaks have been going on for years with loyalists <terrorists> being caught red handed with Police intelligence documents many of which have lead to the murder of innocent people.

    Solicitors, Catholic members of the Government, Catholic Police Officers, in fact any Catholic with a responsible job or some political influence was usually made a target..

    A Police Ombudsman Report released in 2007 highlighted several cases were a link between the Police and Loyalist Terrorists could be demonstrated in the murder of several Catholics. Concerning the supply of personal information. No prosecutions of course.

    Of course Tony Blair put safeguards in place which would never allow this to happen again. Opps well it looks like the safeguards didn't work as I imagine that they won't work for the ID Database.

    If somebody wants to see the information and is determined enough to go looking for it will usually find it.

    Anon for obvious reasons. Big Brother because he seems to watch certain parts of the community more closely than others

  24. Dennis
    Joke

    Time for a fight

    Belfast. The middle of the night. A man walks through the empty streets.

    Suddenly another man appears right in front of him, baseball bat in hand and asks: "Catholic or Protestant?"

    Our man thinks a second and replies: "Jew!"

    The other man grins and says: "Oh! I think, now I'm the most happy Arab in Belfast!"

    - - -

    I must be away to listen to Lily Allen's Him again.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It is always double edged

    in this instance the government is getting screwed but it is normally the people.

    And yes it is the control freaks, who like to call themselves authority, this is the real battle between good and evil, it is those seeking to control, against those looking for freedom and fairness.

    You will often see the control freak use other mechanisms, a common one is the idea of responsibility and trying to attribute their idea of responsibility that benefits them onto others. They will also shout down fairness as being naive and try to justify extreme measures for their own benefit.

    They are in the minority, but they aim for positions that allow them control outside of the normal social constructs so you will find them in some obvious place but also some odd places wherever more control is given.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @Dennis O'Neill

    Of course it won't matter to "MP's" and "Rich / Famous" as they have the option to "Opt Out"...

    How convenient... Which leaves us mere mortals up the creek without a paddle. Sounds familiar _AGAIN_

    /Fail for obvious reasons.

  27. J 3
    Big Brother

    Weird...

    "collected car registration numbers of Catholics living in the town"

    As AC asked above, how do they know? Do you have to state your religion in some document? Do they tell by people's family names? By region where they live? Bizarre.

    Reminds me of a "joke" I've heard before here in the US, about this guy traveling in NI and being stopped by thugs at some checkpoint or so. He's then asked "Are you Catholic or Protestant?", but being an atheist the guy answers "I'm an atheist". That confuses the thugs, leading to a lot of head scratching. They finally ask "But are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?"

    Anyway, I was hoping the monkeys over there had stopped fighting over imaginary issues, but I should have known I was going to be disappointed.

  28. Steve Evans

    @J 3 and A/C

    How do you get car registrations of Catholics?

    Sit outside a Catholic church with a pen and paper on a Sunday.

    Simples

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ambiguous

    "He was found guilty of collecting information likely to be useful to terrorists and misconduct in public office".

    This is quite endearingly ambiguous. So, which is it?

    1. He was found guilty of collecting information likely to be useful to terrorists, and he was also found guilty of misconduct in public office.

    OR

    2. He was found guilty of collecting information likely to be useful to terrorists (and equally useful for misconduct in public office).

    It's the second, and somewhat likelier, alternative that many of us have been worried about for years. But as he was being paid by the government to do that, it could hardly be wrong, could it? Could it??

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Tougher sentences

    are definitely required for people who steal personal information and sell it on. Even 9 months is paltry. It should be on a par with robbery. Even though what's being stolen is intangible, information can be extraordinarily valuable, can be used to ruin careers in the wrong hands and even put lives in danger as in this case.

    I've been a victim of such stolen information, and indeed false information, and I'm in the process of sorting the matter out. I'll be pressing my MP to raise my case in parliament for a dramatic ramping up of the sentences for this type of crime.

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