Information Commissioner discloses details of police officers breaching data protection laws to snoop

The Information Commissioner – the regulator in charge of enforcing data protection law in the UK – has revealed details of police officers who have wrongfully accessed people’s personal data without the consent of the data controller in breach of the Data Protection Act.  One instance had tragic consequences, when a police officer disclosed the details of a pensioner who had been involved in an argument over a supermarket car parking space and the other person’s family then threw a brick threw the pensioner’s window, which resulted in him dying of shock. The officer had used the Police National Computer to match the pensioner’s car to his address.  In another case, an officer accessed the police systems on at least 800 occasions and passed on telephone recotds and checked out his housemate’s family.  Each officer was fined about £1,000.  The Commissioner used the cases as examples to further his argument that there should be prison sentences for illegal access and use of data under the Data Protection Act.