"Police Scotland, the UK's second-largest police force, was 'excessive and unfair' in its decision to lift the entire contents from a mobile phone belonging to an individual who reported a crime. Police Scotland needed to extract the text messages between the individual, a woman, and the alleged offender, a man, as part of its investigation into a 2021 incident, which involved two Police Scotland employees."
"This led to the police acquiring a 'substantial volume' of highly-sensitive information from the victim, including a collection of special category data, the type of which was redacted from official documents. Special category data is a broad term that covers matters including religion, ethnic origin, political leanings, genetic and biometric data, health, sex life, and sexual orientation."
"As part of this, the accused police employee was sent a copy of the documents from the PSD's review, mistakenly including the alleged victim's phone data in full and all the special category data that came with it. In September 2022, the alleged victim complained to the ICO about the incident."
Police Scotland extracted complete data from a crime victim's mobile phone during a 2021 investigation involving two police employees, acquiring substantial volumes of highly sensitive information including special category data covering religion, ethnicity, political views, health, and sexual orientation. The senior investigating officer justified the full extraction as proportionate and necessary for quick device return. The professional standards department then received all case documents, including the complete phone dump. During a misconduct hearing, the accused police employee was mistakenly sent the victim's full phone data and all associated sensitive information. The Information Commissioner's Office determined this constituted a serious failure in data handling and issued a £66,000 fine for excessive and unfair data processing.
#data-protection-violation #police-misconduct #special-category-data #ico-enforcement #privacy-breach
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