Police send Reg hack CRB check database
Massive security breach prompts investigation
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Exclusive Police face accusations of incompetence after accidentally emailing a file detailing the results of thousands of criminal records checks to a Register journalist.
The author of the email at Gwent Police is now facing a gross misconduct investigation and potential sacking over the incident, which came to light this week.
The file — a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which was not encrypted or password protected — contained the full names and dates of birth of 10,006 people in jobs or applying for jobs where a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) disclosure is required.
It detailed the results of the checks going back to 2001 and so identified 863 people as having been in trouble with police. In many cases it recorded their occupations, including dozens of taxi drivers, school and hospital workers.
Personal details and whether a CRB disclosure was made on foster carers, IT technicians and pest controllers was also included in the spreadsheet.
The Register has now deleted the file in cooperation with Gwent Police’s professional standards officers, who travelled to our London offices two days after being contacted.
Investigators are blaming human error for the data breach, rather than the system design. It occurred when the author of the email — a member of the force’s CID data management unit — used the autocomplete function in Novell’s email software to include the journalist’s address along with those of five Gwent Police officials in the “CC” field of the message.
The Register address had been automatically saved by the system after it was used to submit two unrelated Freedom of Information requests last year.
IT workers were immediately called in by chief constable Mick Giannasi to tighten system security so similar incidents cannot occur in the future. Gwent Police has now reported the breach to the Information Commissioner, as required under the Data Protection Act, and to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Meanwhile the individuals whose CRB results were leaked are being contacted to reassure them the sensitive information will not be published.
The incident will nevertheless embarrass ministers, who have mostly avoided serious data losses since a spate in 2007 prompted a review of information security across Whitehall.
Although police chief constables are responsible for their own data protection standards, the fact that some of the most sensitive information officialdom holds can be accidentally sent out as an unprotected spreadsheet will renew criticism of government data gathering and handling efforts.
The Home Office, responsible for policing and the CRB system, is not allowed to respond to press questions during the election campaign because of impartiality rules.
Gwent Police asked The Register to consider not publishing a story about its serious data breach saying it would undermine public confidence in the force, but we declined.
Gail Foley, Gwent Police’s “senior manager of public confidence”, said the force was very sorry over the breach and that its investigation continued. ®
Bootnote
Gwent Police has a help line on 01495 745430 for anyone with concerns.
COMMENTS
Undermine public confidence
The police are absolutely right this does undermine my confidence in them. Well done El Reg for taking the decision to publish this, we as the public have a right to know when the police act incompetently and stuff like this should never be covered up.
Did they explain why they felt the need to export such sensitive data into a spreadsheet and email it to multiple recipients? What need was there for 5+ people to have a copy of the requests in this format and is this compatible for the purposes the data was collected for?
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Sweet merciful crap.
Under which provision of the DPA is it acceptable to dump incredibly sensitive information like that into a plain-ol' Excel spreedsheet and fling it across the Intertubes in plaintext by SMTP? Accidental cc-ing of the Reg or not - data like that should simply never find itself being transmitted from point to point using that sort of method. I think it's fair to assume that the coppers here email critical data around like this in plain text all the time though. Utter ineptitude.
Good on you!
"Gwent Police asked The Register to consider not publishing a story about its serious data breach saying it would undermine public confidence in the force, but we declined."
I wish you could have one on me this evening! Have a good one!
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