The analyst told her friend that the police could access what was thought of as private. That was the crime. Being honest about what the police can do.
The police also say that having the ability to breach privacy is key to keeping people safe but there is no mention of when info secretly scraped from the unsuspecting prevented other unsuspecting people from morbid circumstances.
This whole event looks like the cops are big mad they will now be asked for accountability on another method of investigation. Imagine having to answer for your actions!
To be fair to the plod that’s not the only thing she’s being charged with.
She’s specifically been leaking information about ongoing investigations which for an LEO is a big no-no.
Mottram drove to Kay and Bennett’s house to warn them about the police file on Kay – which as we know, and she didn’t, was deliberately bogus.
If she’d just told people that EncroChat was insecure then she’d have plausible deniability, but she’s clearly pretty involved in trying to assist people in keeping clear of the law (which is pretty cut and dry in the eyes of the law - regardless of what you think of the morality of it all).
Mottram bought weed from a dealer whose phone number was saved in her mobile phone. She also told Bennett about a murder file she had seen on her boss’s desk, and took selfies with her work computer visible and showing an “official sensitive” document.
A few other dodgy bits here too, again, very much in breach of her terms of employment which, for LEA employees can get sticky pretty rapidly.
All of this is quite apart from whether you think the fuzz should have access to private citizens communications (which I should be clear I don’t). But she’s not just an innocent person who just told her mates that they shouldn’t use a specific service to discuss breaking the law.
The analyst told her friend that the police could access what was thought of as private. That was the crime. Being honest about what the police can do.
Do you suggest police analysts should be fully transparent all the time, as in “Hey bob, the cops know you are going to raid the bank tomorrow, better re-arrange”?
Yes. The police, like any government agency, needs to state both the scope of its work and provide metrics for how taxpayers can expect their money spent. This expenditure should include how it achieve its goals and what progress should look like. Then let the people judge the methods are consistent with public expectations of accountability.
Police have repeatedly shown an incapability to behave, respect, or function as a person who has to be responsible for their actions. They cannot be allowed to operate without oversight.
The police, like any government agency, needs to state both the scope of its work and provide metrics for how taxpayers can expect their money spent.
That would be in the charter as set out by the UK parliament. It doesn’t include the requirement that suspects be tipped off about ongoing investigations.
They should be open about how investigative tools work, and what the current privacy expectations are, yes. In the end they have to present their evidence in court, and that includes things like this.
Allowing the police to make up the rules as they go and then justify them later is not the answer to a civilized society. That’s how you end up with a police state. We have privacy laws and basic human rights for a reason. If the cops want to circumvent them, then the laws change first. We are not a society that should accept shooting first and asking questions later.
One of the reasons the Brexiters - who are still in Government - openly stated for Leaving the EU was so that they could leave the European Convention Of Human Rights, since being a signatory of that Convention is a requirement of EU membership.
The British “elites” are very much not believers in the riff-raff having Rights that superceed their mechanisms for controlling the masses if there is an ultimate genuinelly independent enforcer of those Rights (such as the European Court of Human Rights) - the most favored control mechanisms in the UK have an appearence of fairness whilst being de facto designed for operating differently or being easy to subvert, so a trully independent Human Rights mechanism whose judges didn’t went to the same very expensive and very select private schools as the English power elites is borderline unnacceptable (clearly in the case of Brexiter leaders, absolutelly so) for said power elites.
PS: All this to say that in Britain the problem is a lot deeper than merelly the police, who to a large extent are just hired enforcers in a system designed to “keep people in their place”, a mindset probably derived from the horror of the British Elites at what happenned next door in France during the Revolution Française (the political British system is one of the ones in Europe whoch has change the least for over a century).
The analyst told her friend that the police could access what was thought of as private. That was the crime. Being honest about what the police can do.
The police also say that having the ability to breach privacy is key to keeping people safe but there is no mention of when info secretly scraped from the unsuspecting prevented other unsuspecting people from morbid circumstances.
This whole event looks like the cops are big mad they will now be asked for accountability on another method of investigation. Imagine having to answer for your actions!
To be fair to the plod that’s not the only thing she’s being charged with.
She’s specifically been leaking information about ongoing investigations which for an LEO is a big no-no.
If she’d just told people that EncroChat was insecure then she’d have plausible deniability, but she’s clearly pretty involved in trying to assist people in keeping clear of the law (which is pretty cut and dry in the eyes of the law - regardless of what you think of the morality of it all).
A few other dodgy bits here too, again, very much in breach of her terms of employment which, for LEA employees can get sticky pretty rapidly.
All of this is quite apart from whether you think the fuzz should have access to private citizens communications (which I should be clear I don’t). But she’s not just an innocent person who just told her mates that they shouldn’t use a specific service to discuss breaking the law.
Do you suggest police analysts should be fully transparent all the time, as in “Hey bob, the cops know you are going to raid the bank tomorrow, better re-arrange”?
Yes. The police, like any government agency, needs to state both the scope of its work and provide metrics for how taxpayers can expect their money spent. This expenditure should include how it achieve its goals and what progress should look like. Then let the people judge the methods are consistent with public expectations of accountability.
Police have repeatedly shown an incapability to behave, respect, or function as a person who has to be responsible for their actions. They cannot be allowed to operate without oversight.
That would be in the charter as set out by the UK parliament. It doesn’t include the requirement that suspects be tipped off about ongoing investigations.
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Which is not at all something being suggested.
They should be open about how investigative tools work, and what the current privacy expectations are, yes. In the end they have to present their evidence in court, and that includes things like this.
Should they prevent a crime or watch it happen knowing they could have stopped it just to get an arrest? What will happen in cases of murder?
Allowing the police to make up the rules as they go and then justify them later is not the answer to a civilized society. That’s how you end up with a police state. We have privacy laws and basic human rights for a reason. If the cops want to circumvent them, then the laws change first. We are not a society that should accept shooting first and asking questions later.
One of the reasons the Brexiters - who are still in Government - openly stated for Leaving the EU was so that they could leave the European Convention Of Human Rights, since being a signatory of that Convention is a requirement of EU membership.
The British “elites” are very much not believers in the riff-raff having Rights that superceed their mechanisms for controlling the masses if there is an ultimate genuinelly independent enforcer of those Rights (such as the European Court of Human Rights) - the most favored control mechanisms in the UK have an appearence of fairness whilst being de facto designed for operating differently or being easy to subvert, so a trully independent Human Rights mechanism whose judges didn’t went to the same very expensive and very select private schools as the English power elites is borderline unnacceptable (clearly in the case of Brexiter leaders, absolutelly so) for said power elites.
PS: All this to say that in Britain the problem is a lot deeper than merelly the police, who to a large extent are just hired enforcers in a system designed to “keep people in their place”, a mindset probably derived from the horror of the British Elites at what happenned next door in France during the Revolution Française (the political British system is one of the ones in Europe whoch has change the least for over a century).