Bigmouth ex-coppers who fed media MP pr0nz story face privacy probe The cops who blabbed to the press about the UK's disgraced former First Secretary of State's alleged porn stash are to be investigated by Blighty's privacy watchdog. Damian Green, who was today sacked* from his Cabinet role by his old pal PM Theresa May, has been accused of having porn on his work computer. The claims, made …
I think the BBC (for once) did a good summary of this http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42437530
I liked this bit:
"If, as he alleges, he had not downloaded or viewed the material himself, did he inform the parliamentary authorities that his computers had been improperly accessed or hacked by someone else?
Did Mr Green tell David Cameron that his computers' security may have been compromised when the former prime minister appointed him to the Home Office in 2010?
And was Theresa May informed about it when Mr Green was her policing minister between 2012 and 2014, and later when she rejuvenated his political career by bringing him into the cabinet? "
No one was ever going to come out of this smelling of roses, but whatever Mr.Greens failures were, it does not give policemen or former policemen the right to breach confidentiality.
I'm almost always on the side of the fuzz but only when they play with a straight bat.
@down-voters - remember this moment when they breach your confidentiality.
"it does not give policemen or former policemen the right to breach confidentiality."
Normally I'd agree, but in this particular case, they should be covered under whistleblower legislation - they knew Green was actively lying to the public about this, and t was in the public interest to know that he was doing so since the behaviour in question was potentially damaging to national security.
Green was either grossly negligent in allowing others to access his PC under his credentials, or was just plain gross in sitting in his office in parliament wanking through the workday. Those are the two possible outcomes from the known facts. He should have come clean (no pun intended) about which one it was rather than denying it outright, since options 1 is an extremely dangerous breach of the ministerial code, while option 2 is just a bit embarrassing. If he'd been honest, then there'd have been no need for the coppers to come forward.
Normally I'm all for digging the dirt on a senior politician.
But in this case there's no whistleblowing argument. Green's lie came in response to the unwarranted police persecution. If they hadn't leaked, he'd have had nothing to deny.
I heard the cop interviewed on BBC radio, when he spoke of thousands of pornographic thumbnails. Well, you could have those in places like a browser cache or a mail folder (especially a spam folder, where they're inevitable) without ever having actually visited a porn site. Seems very suspicious that that should ever have become a story.
Green's dismissal is because he got caught lying to the press about something that wasn't really important (in ministerial terms) and it was laughably easy to prove.
It could be considered a grave mistake by a minister saying ANYTHING to the press that is verifiable. You don't lie, you say a bunch of words that sound like something, but give full wriggle room if you get called on it.
So nothing illegal, just incompetence at a high level of the greasy pole.
He'll be on the back benches for a bit, then recycled. The only people who can fire him are his party selection committee. In theory the voters in his constituency could too, but unlikely in practice.
"Well, you could have those in places like a browser cache or a mail folder (especially a spam folder, where they're inevitable) without ever having actually visited a porn site. "
Porn thumbnails are mysteriously absent from my own work computer - which is hopefully rather less secure than that of a minister of the crown. In fact, I can search the whole network here, and I'd be decidedly surprised to find several thousand porn thumbnails on any of the client machines. And that's just with my commercial-grade network security in place; I can only imagine what MI6 have set up for parliament.
This isn't a Hotmail account, ffs, it's a parliamentary computer on a secured network being used to work on classified documents. If it had no external spam protection or network filtering in place then that's arguably an even worse scandal, since it implies that the government network has the same security setup as a twelve year old's laptop.
As for 'if they hadn't leaked, he'd have nothing to deny'... that's more or less the entire point of whistleblowing, no? Otherwise, we're very much in the territory of 'it's only wrong if you get caught'.
Frankly, I'm not overly bothered about whether Green was sat jerking off in his office all day - it's more or less what I assume half the current cabinet are doing, since I see little evidence they're qualified for anything else - but I am concerned about the idea that IT security in the House of Commons is so lax that MPs are handing out their login credentials to any idiot on staff who asks for them. If he'd simply admitted that he was looking at porn at work, then I'd agree that he was a victim of police over-reach, but his 'someone else must've logged into my account and done it' excuse suggests he shouldn't be trusted in a position of responsibility with access to huge quantities of privileged information. And that's very much in the public interest when he's a senior public servant. At best, he's either a liar or incompetent, and at worst he's both.
"And that's just with my commercial-grade network security in place; I can only imagine what MI6 have set up for parliament."
Very much less, I'd think. For a start MI6's role is foreign intelligence so it wouldn't be their job at all. Also, if Parliament is sovereign who are MI5 or GCHQ to tell them what they can and can't do?
Porn thumbnails are mysteriously absent from my own work computer -
You've never followed a link that turned out to go to a Daily Mail story, loading your browser cache with 20 or 30 pornographic thumbnails from that long row down the right hand side?
I usually avoid such links, but occasionally get caught (of course I never click on the thumbnails). For an MP, I'd expect his work to involve reading lots more newspaper stories than I ever read. Including those like the Wail that fill your cache with pornographic thumbnails.
Many moons ago, I had to fix a HP printer - some plastic bit had broken off somewhere. Couldn't find it anywhere, so had the idea of googling the part number and viewing images to see what came up.
One such picture was of a rather attractive lady with large bulgarian airbags. Turned out that the file name of the photo matched the part number!
> without ever having actually visited a porn site. Seems very suspicious that that should ever have become a story.
He also referred to the activity timeline - generated by the forensics package...
“In between browsing pornography, he was sending emails from his account, his personal account, reading documents ... it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it.”
...and he also defended Green to an extent by contradicting the claims in some papers at the time that he had been accessing extreme/illegal porn - making it clear that at the time all the porn sites he was using were legal.
>Green's lie came in response to the unwarranted police persecution.
No the lie came because he believed other officers would remain silent, the evidence had been deleted and 'doubling down' has become a go to strategy for politicians living in bubbles.
Lewis and Stephenson didn't weigh in until he had traduced Bob Quick - and several officers have put their 2p in off the record. If Green had been honest or just silent the other officers would have been advised against speaking out as there would be no public interest in doing so.
So he resigns not for being a twat* but because he wasn't upfront about his lawyers knowing he was accused of being a twat*.
*Another word for c*nt.
Now they can sweep the other stuff under the carpet while no one is looking. I think you'll find that people that are inappropriate towards the opposite sex don't just do it on one occasion.
I don't get why he isn't facing something more serious than an ICO probe.
This article from the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42151148) quotes him admitting that he took home evidence: "... Mr Lewis said the only police notebook he took with him was the one he had used during Operation Miser. The notebook, seen by the BBC ..."
I think police notebooks have a higher evidential status than something that you or I might have written so the idea that he could just walk out with it when he retired is pretty shocking (to me at least).
A police officer's notebook is their number one piece of evidence. It is something that, if properly written up, carries a lot of weight in a court case. They are indeed not something to be messed around with lightly.
Taking one home after resigning (due to a stupid, self inflicted incident) does seem particularly foolish. I'm not in a position to know for sure, but it does seem as if he's got some sort of chip on his shoulder.
I have nothing to do with the police, but I strongly suspect that this business will be related amongst senior offices for generations to come as a Warning From History; don't cock about pursuing public figures, especially politicians, unless you're really, really sure. And if you can't prove it, walk away forever.
There's nothing special about a police officer's notebook that sets it apart from anything you or I can write. If you write something down, time and date stamp it, especially if it's just one of a series of jottings in journal of similarly timed / dated entries, in a book with a binding, then that's a pretty solid piece of documentation that will be equally strong evidence in a court case. It's a physical thing that an expert can examine, and make surprisingly accurate conclusions about its authenticity. If I have anything important to record (like, really important), I write it down in a proper bound log book, and date and time it.
>Taking one home after resigning (due to a stupid, self inflicted incident) does seem particularly foolish.
Neil Lewis (the officer who kept notes on Miser) retired after an exemplary career he didn't resign. Likewise Sir Paul Stephenson who hammered in the final coffin nail has no particular dog in the fight.
I suspect the referral is just to save face because there is almost certainly no (legal) case to answer. The porn accusations have always been a smokescreen in this: stupid, embarassing but also ten years ago so meh. The Maltby stuff is more important but much less widely reported because: firstly, it's less titillatious and; secondly, because it allows the pseudo-defence of cops being naughty. Green is an ex-ITN journalist and has managed to play this as if he has no case to answer: his resignation is a loss of face only and he'll be back before long. Look at that tosser, BoJo, who made an erroneous statement in Parliament that materially affected a British citizen, whose rights it's his fucking job to protect. In a normal world he'd had to resign on the spot. Then there's that odious toad, Dr Liam Fox, who had to resign because he was fiddling his expenses, but who's back as a minister, albeit one with nothing to do, but with all the perks.
Drain the moat!
Theft of Crown Property IIRC, and the 'in the public interest' defence won't fly IF the CPS don't screw up the requisite prosecution. Who's to say the notes aren't truly contemporaneous and the files weren't inserted after changing the date using 'Cain & Able', a piece of software much loved by Police officers, not so much by their forensic computer analysis service...
I'm still confused by this game of chess.
Did the detectives do it to get back at May for her speech crticising the police?
.. meanwhile the Met distance themselves from the two guys.
May gets weakened further..
Does it say "watch out all of you, be nice to us or else" or is it just routine squabbles?
Who knows. But if you have police officers messing about using their powers to unjustifiably (i.e. no crime has been committed) pursue public figures / politicians, it's time to start thinking about finding another country to live in.
If it happens at all, it absolutely must be stamped out immediately. A civil society cannot survive if those tasked with policing it decide to start using their privileged position to wield influence instead of keeping a lid on crime.
A civil society cannot survive if those tasked with policing it decide to start using their privileged position to wield influence instead of keeping a lid on crime
Seems like you've been living under a bucket for a while. The police routintely exceeds its statuory powers, often at the behest of HMG. In terms of the alleged excesses in 2008 and subsequent, the CPS obviously thought there was no action required so end of.
As for dirt dished on someone in the public eye: why should the two ex-coppers be treated any differently to the newspapers who seem to do this all the time. Or MPs who abuse parliamentary privilege to do it? There'll be a brief investigation but no charges because Green and others almost certainly don't want the evidence turning up in court.
Is it breaching a burglar's data protection rights to publish his appearance in court, even if he's found not guilty? Green is a public servant and was (in my view) abusing the time and resources that I pay for in order to ogle naked woman. He can damn' well do that on his own time, not on the time that he should be spending working on making my society better. I know from personal experience at work that a person caught visiting iffy websites on his work computer was out of the building, pass revoked, the very same day.
The police are absolutely right to make this public as a service to the electorate.
Look I don't like most politicians but lets just break down your comments...
'Is it breaching a burglar's data protection rights to publish his appearance in court, even if he's found not guilty?' - Appearance is not part of data protection.
'Green is a public servant and was (in my view) abusing the time and resources that I pay for in order to ogle naked woman.' - Was he doing it on his own time, and those were also thumbnails which can be accumulated from spam etc
'He can damn' well do that on his own time, not on the time that he should be spending working on making my society better.' - As above was it in his own time. Making society better? Well ideally but once you've been around the block a bit then your realize that your statement is incredibility naive.
' I know from personal experience at work that a person caught visiting iffy websites on his work computer was out of the building, pass revoked, the very same day.' - That's a place you worked out and is not relevant to a police action.
'The police are absolutely right to make this public as a service to the electorate.' - Leaking confidential information to the press to get someone kicked, if you leaked confidential information would you be walked out?
Sounds like you did a knee jerk reaction without thinking or reading up on the article and back story, so I guess that makes you upper management?
"your statement is incredibility naive"
I can understand some of your points as a normal difference of points of view, but "naive"...? No, that one I totally reject, because the alternatives are that our representatives are in office to maintain the normal (IMO unacceptable) status quo or to make it worse, and I doubt that this is the proposition that you intend...?
(P.S. "incredibility naive"? Check your spellchecker).
Going back a bit: If he's found not guilty then he's not a burglar, he's just a man.
It is said that the porn images were time stamped between sending work e-mails so if porn was viewed it was done during work. I'm not sure we should read too much into the term thumbnails, the police could just mean that they saw the images as thumbnails and didn't open them up. The police correctly reported that the images are not illegal but I believe it is against the code of conduct for MPs or Ministers.
Either way it raises questions about why a minister who says it wasn't him didn't report the fact that someone else had been using his computer and then lied about it.
Still at least he didn't buy porn and then charge it as an expense... unlike some others.....
"Either way it raises questions about why a minister who says it wasn't him didn't report the fact that someone else had been using his computer and then lied about it."
That point has been raised multiple times and both MPs and Ministers are on record as saying they share their log in details and passwords with their staff as a matter of course. Horrifying to us, but that seems to be (or has been) the culture in that place for some while now.
"I know from personal experience at work that a person caught visiting iffy websites on his work computer was out of the building, pass revoked, the very same day."
I assume by "iffy", you mean child porn or other illegal stuff, otherwise any reasonable employer would issue a warning, not fire on the spot, unless the boss was Mussolini.
"I assume by "iffy", you mean child porn or other illegal stuff, otherwise any reasonable employer would issue a warning, not fire on the spot, unless the boss was Mussolini."
Depends on your legal locale. For countries with labor rights, this probably runs afoul of various laws. Not that this ever really stops employees pulling this, but if you want to lawyer up you'll probably get a job or a payout from it. If you're in a "at will" state, then that's kind of the point. Boss wants you gone, you're gone.
If you're using a secured machine for browsing porn, I'd fire you for being a dumbarse. Or force you to undergo security training, which is probably worse.
If I took home confidential information about the people I help I would certainly expect some penalty and if my employer allowed it then my employer would be in big trouble.
As under PACE there are strict rules around the police notebooks the fact that he could take them home means the Met didn't have adequate safeguards in place, which given that this information was then given to the media makes it even worse.
The police have no problem telling all and sundry of allegations about individuals suspected of sex crimes, in order to "get other victims to come forward". The fact it ruins lives, usually men's, if they are innocent is of no concern to the State. They really don't care, just so long as they are seen to be doing "something".
If it's legally acceptable to name and shame some people before they have been to court, regardless of their innocence, then these policeman are just being consistent.
Unfortunately, the British establishment often doesn't want to know the real truth, they just want to shoot the whistleblowers. Especially if their friends are under the spotlight. If this hadn't become public you can be sure Queen Henry VIII would have ensured he remained in post, regardless of lying to Parliament. As usual, one law for the lawmakers, another for everyone else.
The same thing happens when people have their computers repaired by the "Geek Squad".
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/customer-sues-best-buy-alleges-geek-squad-worker-stole-published-f6C10929636
https://consumerist.com/2007/07/12/geek-squad-hatched-plot-to-harvest-porn-from-pornstar-jasmine-greys-harddrive-days-before-she-died-i/
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-buy-customer-geek-squad-employee-kept-racy-photos-of-her-2012-7
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/05/22/yes-geek-squad-can-search-your-files-and-hand-you-over-to-the-police/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/if-a-best-buy-technician-is-a-paid-fbi-informant-are-his-computer-searches-legal/2017/01/09/f56028b4-d442-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html
For a start MI6's role is foreign intelligence so it wouldn't be their job at all.
Au contraire mon ami. Having any sort of intelligence is fairly foreign to a great many politicians so there is a case for the MI6 secret squirrels to become involved in this.
Mine's the one with the secret decoder ring in the hidden pocket.
There’s a lot of talk here and elsewhere about MP’s working hours and their work computers. Does an MP have working hours even when in HoP? Isn’t he often also working at home and other places? If some of his/her time in HoP is not working is it OK for an MP to use a private computer and how does it connect to t’interwebs?
I don’t know the answer to these questions though I suspect the lines between an MP’s “work” and private life are blurred.
If there is a case to answer then expect a prosecution. But in the light of the absence of such a prosecution you might want to review your position. I don't condone the actions of the ex-coppers but it's obvious to me that they're mainly being used as scapegoats in the whole thing: don't look at the allegations of sexual impropriety, look at the naughty coppers.
It seems fairly clear to me that if these ex-coppers were still serving, they would (pretty much) immediatly be dismissed for Gross Misconduct, and probably charged with "Misconduct in a Public Office".
The fact that they are no longer serving _shouldn't_ make a big difference.
The fact that they are no longer serving _shouldn't_ make a big difference.
It doesn't but the timescale does. At a pinch this could be seem to be similar to the NoW phone hacking stuff, but the referral to the ICO rather than the CPS would seem to indicate that no one really thinks the law was broken here.
If there is a court case then it will be primarily with the Metropolitan Police and why let the leak to happen. But everyone expects this to blow over over Christmas now that Green has resigned.
Seems a bit silly and somewhat surprising...for over 17 years now (long ongoing 'dispute') suspected pigyobs routinely flout that law along with all the others. Numerous breaches by these people over this time has had a large part in destroying my life...if only there was an appropriate body I can at least complain to :-(
But as I recall they didn't have a warrant to gain access to that computer in the first place. And it wasn't Green or any of his underlings that gave them 'permission'...It was the 'Speaker of the House' that effectively helped them into gaining illegal access...not just on Green but on his constituents and no doubt numerous other people. All of which is extremely personal...never arrested or prosecuted as usual.
Goes to show it's not really who you think is the government are the one's that rule us.
These former policemen were probably acting in public interest following Jimmy Saville and others (Rolf Harris, Max Clifford, etc.) who got away with their behaviour for so long because no-one did come forward.
As people who had relevant information on a possible predador/pornographer they probably felt it was their duty to bring this information forward. Should the ICO investigate and find against these whistleblowers are they setting up the next Jimmy Saville/Rolf Harris/Max Clifford???
Seems to me the cops would be in breach of data protection if they were still employed by the Met. As they are retired they are fairly immune to any sort of sanction. And they certainly would have taken advice on the matter of this being a criminal act.
So it was just a case of them sticking the boot into Dirty Damian's career. Perhaps they didn't like him.
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