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By Martin Graham
STRATHCLYDE Police are flouting data protection laws by charging £60 to reveal details of drivers involved in collisions.
Police have traditionally refused to disclose driver’s addresses or insurance policy numbers, saying that it contravenes the Data Protection Act.
But Strathclyde Police are charging £60.50 to release Road Crash Reports, which records the name and address of the owner and driver, as well as insurance company details and policy number.
A SCOTS police officer was exposed by his own colleagues as being a cocaine dealer with a £520 per month drug habit.
Christopher McGinn gave his friends lines of coke in exchange for pints of beer in pub toilets.
He used an iTunes card to snort his own.
And when the 29 year-old was busted by colleagues at Lothian and Borders Police, he desperately pleaded with them to hide his case.
He begged them: “I’m a cop too, I’m a cop too. Lose it for me. Lose it for me please.”
But McGinn had been under covert surveillance and saw no other option but to resign from the force after eight years.
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By Cara Sulieman
A PHARMACY chain has started using fingerprint technology to make sure that methadone doesn’t get into the wrong hands.
Co-op stores across the country have installed scanners to help them identify patients who are picking up the heroin substitute.
It is being used in pharmacies where there are a large number of methadone users to cut costs and improve security.
Storing the fingerprints for future use, they claim it is an added safeguard to ensure that the potentially dangerous substance isn’t given out to the wrong people.
By Paul Thornton
A POLICEWOMAN is facing a fine of up to £5,000 after she illegally accessed people’s data using a police computer.
Anna Wong, 26, was suspended by Lothian and Borders Police after they caught her using intelligence databases to look-up people she knew.
SHAMED: Anna Wong
Wong – originally from Hong Kong – used the Scottish Intelligence Database and the Lothian and Borders Operational Support System to obtain personal details of a number of Chinese people living in Scotland.
The officer was suspended after it emerged Wong was accessing the details at the capital’s St Leonards Police Station between March 2006 and June 2007.
Wong was charged with 54 breaches of the Data Protection Act and later admitted 28 of the charges at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
She insists she did not pass the information on to anyone else but could face a maximum £5,000 fine.
Fiscal depute Beverley Adam said Wong had been at level nine on the scale of access privileges within the force – the lowest rating with access to the information – when she used the databases.
Her solicitor, David O’Hagan, said Wong had begun tapping into the database to look-up outstanding cases against two people she knew. However, Mr O’Hagan said, because of the difficulties in recording Chinese names on the computers, Wong simply entered “Chinese” as a search term and began accessing others in the Chinese community to investigate possible links. Continue reading
Deadline Press & Picture Agency 