The data protection regulator the ICO has fined Greater Manchester Police (GMP) £150,000 after three DVDs containing footage of interviews with victims of violent or sexual crimes got lost in the post. The force sent the unencrypted DVDs to the Serious Crime Analysis Section (SCAS) of the National Crime Agency (NCA) by recorded delivery; they were never received. The DVDs, which showed named victims talking openly, have never been found.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that the police failed to keep highly sensitive personal information in its care secure and did not have appropriate measures in place to guard against accidental loss. This is the ICO points out a breach of data protection law, the Data Protection Act 1998.
Sally Anne Poole, ICO Enforcement Group Manager, said: “When people talk to the police they have every right to expect that their information is handled with the utmost care and respect. Greater Manchester Police did not do this. The information it was responsible for was highly sensitive and the distress that would be caused if it was lost should have been obvious. Yet GMP was cavalier in its attitude to this data and it showed scant regard for the consequences that could arise by failing to keep the information secure.”
The ICO found that GMP had been sending unencrypted DVDs, not password-protected, by recorded delivery to SCAS (which seeks to identify potential serial killers and rapists, early) since 2009; police forces generally send cases to the NCA for assessment. GMP only stopped their method after the security breach in 2015, although the ICO did not make public how many times the force sent cases that way (rather than by special delivery, or even a courier). In the penalty notice, the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham called on police forces ‘to ensure that appropriate and effective security measures are applied to DVDs containing personal data’.
GMP has previous; the ICO fined the force £150,000 in 2012 after an unencrypted USB stick was stolen. The notice said that the force had taken ‘remedial action’ until there was a ‘technical solution’.
Comment
Tony Pepper, co-founder and CEO of Egress, a company that offers secure data transfer software, said: “Victims of crime should have the right to expect that information they give will be handled with the utmost care, and this is exactly what Greater Manchester Police failed to do. In cases like this, where sensitive information is at stake, it’s important that the authorities do everything in their power to secure information and maintain the high data protection standards expected of them.
“Technology has a crucial role to play in the handling of sensitive data, especially with government now fully committed to using digital to transform the justice system. Adopting electronic systems will not only ensure a swifter, fairer administration of justice, but also streamline and join up the community in the process. Transferring evidence electronically will remove the risk of files getting lost in the post, as the case was here, but fundamentally authorities need to encrypt such highly sensitive data however they intend to share it. The benefits of a digital encrypted platform is the extended control granted by audit logs and user permissions that restrict individuals from downloading and sharing information, which can never exist when sharing physical copies. This also calls on authorities to better support employees by providing them with more comprehensive training, so they’re in a better position to identify the threats and operate within an increasingly challenging data security environment.”
