Sat 20 June 2020:
Police are extracting “excessive amounts of personal data” from the mobile phones of victims and witnesses during investigations and are in danger of discouraging the public from reporting crime, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has warned.
“An approach that does not seek this engagement risks dissuading citizens from reporting crime, and victims may be deterred from assisting police. I am therefore calling on government to introduce modern rules, through a code of practice that improves data extraction practices,” UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote in the introduction of the report.
“People expect to understand how their personal data is being used, regardless of the legal basis for processing. My concern is that an approach that does not seek this engagement risks dissuading citizens from reporting crime, and victims may be deterred from assisting police.”
The report notes that individuals see mobile phones “as extensions of themselves; they have become unique repositories of our personal information, generating huge amounts of data and often hold the most intimate and private details of our everyday lives”.
Police data extraction methods “appeared excessive in many cases, with little or no justification or demonstration of strict necessity and proportionality”, it adds.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
