back to article Brit cops slammed for failing to give answers on digital device data slurpage

Police forces have been urged to keep better records on how much data they slurp from the hundreds of thousands of digital devices they seize, and how it is used. Campaign group Big Brother Watch issued the demands after a largely unsuccessful mission to assess just how much data the forces extract from devices they've seized …

  1. Halfmad

    OK did anyone proof read this?

    Norfolk and Suffolk constabularies had a joint budget of £20,000 for the 2013-16 period, but they also doubled the number of officers trained in data extraction in the last year: from 25 in 2015 to 109 in 2016.

    ^^ I'm not sure that's "doubling" Reg.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: OK did anyone proof read this?

      ^^ I'm not sure that's "doubling" Reg.

      That wasn't the Reg, it was copper maths, and includes "taken into consideration".

      As in 1 offence detected plus two suspect confessions equals four offences taken into consideration, and thus a clear up of four crimes. Me, jaundiced?

    2. Tigra 07
      Pint

      Re: OK did anyone proof read this?

      A doubling of over 300%...What's that in bananas to scale?

      1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: OK did anyone proof read this?

        "A doubling of over 300%...What's that in bananas to scale?"

        The explanation is that the bananas used to straight, but are now bendy. Hence the confusion.

  2. Dan 55 Silver badge

    "10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

    I'll do this one for free...

    SELECT COUNT(*) FROM seized_device_table

    1. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: "10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

      Error: Table "seized_device_table" not found. Line 1.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

        Error: Missing Operator

        Which is what they wan't you to believe.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

      now try this when all the property has been entered as free text, then you're at the mercy of typos.

      Police IT systems are generally set up to facilitate investigating crime or processing cases - not for this sort of beancounting. That's not a dig at big brother watch, simply pointing out that this sort of monitoring needs to be designed in from the start, and some of the decent systems pre-date the FOI act.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: "10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

        "simply pointing out that this sort of monitoring needs to be designed in from the start, and some of the decent systems pre-date the FOI act."

        Way back when HOLMES was being set up I was shown what purported to be a specification for it. It didn't include any reporting function.

    3. veti Silver badge

      Re: "10 said it would require a manual search to get it."

      Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, there's a table called something like "seized_property".

      Now, what are the odds that table has checkboxes like "electronic_item"? "digital_item"? "social_media_enabled"? (And if it has, how likely is it that that information is correctly entered and audited?)

      More likely it just has, at best, a drop-down-selected field that can hold values such as "Mobile Phone" - without differentiating between smart and dumb phones, or carphones, or feature phones.

      At worst, it may even be entered as free text, in which case... good luck with that query.

  3. James 51

    The average time taken to examine the devices (along with the minimum and maximum) would be interesting to know. Ever get the feeling the police are taking all this stuff because they feel like they should but haven't got a clue what to do with it?

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Also a convenient way to deal with disruptive elements and other enemies of the state.

      Impound all their expensive electronic devices for analysis for the typical 3 years, wait till they buy more, repeat.

      It's common over here to use against producers of "artistic images of the female form". The law says the police can inspect the records that show the models are >18. They interpret that to mean take away any computer that might have the records on it and keep for 24-36 months to check them, and of course cameras have computers and memory cards so you take all those as well,

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They do have a clue.

      Lets say they have the data and at some point they want to clear up some crimes it would not be much of a stretch of the imagination to think that this data could be misused to obtain a confession from a known criminal or otherwise.

      There is also analysis to be done from the perspective of predicting criminal behaviour, you could look at the data of known criminals to see if there are any patterns.

      Phones and devices can contain an extraordinary amount of data on a person.

      The law is probably working as intended so I wouldn't expect any change soon and even if they do I am even less optimistic that the forces in question will follow it (there are examples of where this has already happened, APNR/DNA/People not charged)

    3. Adam 52 Silver badge

      There are people on here who know the process better than me, but if you're concerned about images then every image needs to be viewed (esoteric cases involving hashes excepted). That involves a person. If you've got 2,000 hours of "Watching Paint Dry" then it takes a PC 2,000 hours. After everything's come back from the lab. And these days, because Theresa May "protected" the "front line" it will be a PC because there are no civilian staff left. Apart from the privatised detectives, who generally won't be involved in piddling small crime.

  4. MrBanana

    Data access

    I don't believe that the 'information wasn’t held in an "easily retrievable format"', knowing police computer systems, it was almost certainly written somewhere on a bunch of Post-It notes.

    1. James 51

      Re: Data access

      Given that one of the excuses they tried to use to hold onto illegal dna info and mug shots was their IT systems were too crap to handle weeding the illegal information out without damaging the information they were suppose to have, a crap by design system isn't that far fetched.

      https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/17/home_office_pushes_ahead_with_facial_recognition_system_despite_furore_over_innocent_mugshots/

  5. mark l 2 Silver badge

    "Norfolk and Suffolk constabularies had a joint budget of £20,000 for the 2013-16 period"

    Imagine that they find a terrorist cell and seize all their computers and devices. That could be loads of memory cards & DVDs, plus a laptops, phones, tablest, NAS boxes etc to check and that would soon burn through a 20k budget in no time.

    1. 's water music

      >"Norfolk and Suffolk constabularies had a joint budget of £20,000 for the 2013-16 period"

      Imagine that they find a terrorist cell and seize all their computers and devices. That could ...soon burn through a 20k budget in no time.

      That was a training budget, not the operational budget

  6. herman

    How many millions of pounds of equipment did they destroy in the process and was it really worth it?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BBW?

    Oh!

    Not that kind of BBW!

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: BBW?

      BBW?

      Oh!

      Not that kind of BBW!

      Are you sure? Do-nuts 'n that...

  8. unwarranted triumphalism

    You want the police to do their jobs...

    yet demand every single bit of minutiae about how they do it.

    Choose one.

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