How London thieves exploit organisational silos

Re:How London thieves exploit organisational silos by dTal on Sunday March 31, 2019 @09:40AM (#19535520)

That's just it. There's already a frontend for the police to use that gives them access to all the data for a single phone number, sans warrant. Does that same frontend allow them to perform arbitrary queries across the entire dataset?. If not, then pursuing this lead would involve filling out forms and writing letters to telcos, possibly even obtaining warrants (unlike the usual process), and they probably wouldn't bother.

Incidentally, the ability to perform unrestricted arbitrary queries without a warrant across the entire phone-location dataset is a fairly horrifying amount of power for the police to have. But I suppose legally that ship has sailed with RIPA, and now it's just a question of the fine details of the implementation.

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Re:How London thieves exploit organisational silos by multjoy on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:28PM (#19537265)

No.

Getting a request approved is a nightmare. It's literally easier to get a search warrant from the courts than it is persuading police SPOCs to approve your RIPA request.

The gatekeeping is fearsome. They take their duties incredibly seriously.

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Re:How London thieves exploit organisational silos by dTal on Sunday March 31, 2019 @07:50PM (#19539270)

I'm not quite sure what your 'no' is specifically in reference to. I'm also not sure what a SPOC is, and I'm not familiar with the details of the process.

But The Guardian reported in 2014 that "EE, Vodafone and Three give police mobile call records at click of a mouse", and in 2015 that "UK police requests to access phone calls or emails are granted 93% of the time", with rejection rates varying wildly by county from as high as 28% to as low as 0.1%. So it doesn't seem to be as hard as you're making out, unless things have changed wildly in the last few years. May I ask your sources?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/automatic-poli...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/police-request...

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Re:How London thieves exploit organisational silos by angry_octet on Monday April 01, 2019 @03:16AM (#19541206)

SPOC = single point of contact

The filtering isn't about civil liberties (although keeping councils out seems sensible) but rate limiting requests via paperwork, so only important ones get done.

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Re:How London thieves exploit organisational silos by multjoy on Monday April 01, 2019 @08:21AM (#19542549)

What's your source for that?

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Re:How London thieves exploit organisational silos by multjoy on Monday April 01, 2019 @08:16AM (#19542526)

I'm a police officer who routinely uses communications data in investigations.

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