Northern Ireland police’s data breach is a dream for terrorists
Tom Rogan
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In a catastrophic data breach, a member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland accidentally uploaded to the internet a file containing sensitive personal data on every one of the PSNI’s employees.
If there ever were a police force that you most wouldn’t want this to happen to, it would be the PSNI. The PSNI isn’t responsible simply for policing Northern Ireland; it’s also responsible for the U.K. province’s counterterrorism efforts. This data breach could only be more catastrophic if officers’ home addresses had been leaked. Still, it’s very, very bad.
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As the Belfast Telegraph reports, the PSNI “mistakenly published the names, ranks, locations and other personal data of every serving police officer and civilian employee. … For each individual, there are 32 pieces of data meaning that in total, there are about 345,000 pieces of data in the file.” The breach disclosed officers’ service numbers, ranks, assignments, the “location where they are based … and other technical information about their employment.” The identities of 40 officers working with the United Kingdom’s MI5 domestic intelligence service were also listed.
That speaks to the primary concern. While the data have been removed from the internet, the Belfast Telegraph reports that it is already in widespread circulation among officers. It is likely to leak further.
In turn, if terrorists associated with the New IRA or other Irish separatist groups (seeking the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland) were to access this data, they could use it to target PSNI officers and efforts. This leak will thus cause great stress for PSNI personnel. They know they may now be targeted for harassment or assassination.
A particular concern will be how this disclosure affects the service of Catholic officers. After all, a major reason the PSNI was formed in the first place was in response to widespread Catholic concerns that the force’s predecessor, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was biased against Catholics. The RUC sometimes even colluded with Protestant terrorists. PSNI’s Catholic officers are still vulnerable to being targeted for working with what some in the Catholic community regard as a British occupation force. This is not a hypothetical concern. In 2011, a Catholic PSNI officer was assassinated by Irish terrorists who put a bomb under his vehicle.
As one retired PSNI officer told the Belfast Telegraph: “Many officers from Catholic communities don’t tell their families, friends and ex-school colleagues — I worked with many who never did even in recent times. That is a huge issue when that community is still underrepresented and the PSNI is trying to encourage [Catholic] applicants.”
This terrorist concern might be the major one, but there are numerous other risks here. Criminals associated with organized crime and the drug trade may also exploit the leak. Knowing which officers are assigned to ports security, background checks, and organized crime investigations, criminals could offer bribes or threats in return for corrupt service, for example.
In sum, this is a screw up of monumental proportions. Those responsible should be held accountable. Other police forces around the world should take precautions to ensure they never make the same mistake.