Operation Motorman - ICO Investigation

Operation Motorman was an Investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office into the illegal selling for personal information. This information came from the Police and went to the press.  Interesting stuff, isn't it kids?  Again the FoI has help us to get a deeper insight into what was happening and what has been found.  What can we find?  Well here goes!

First off here and here are the ledgers that were found in the investigation. They hold a lot of information into the use of the information and what was contained therein. This is amazing, the fact that we can see what was done in this investigation!  Not only that, but here are some of the legal advice that has been given on this matter (admittedly this is a good read, but shows up some very interesting ideas and opinions). Here is a list of the CPS instructions on the prosecutions of people accused for Data Protection Breaches.

Because of this operation a number of different reports were made as a result. They are called ‘What price Privacy’ and ‘what price privacy now’. You can get this from google if you follow this link, but there is a lot of information that people still want. For example, one of the things wanted is the background information.  This was refused mainly because the information was out of date and could not be given and didn't have the legal right to do so (The ICO maintaining its own standard here).  Again this is a very broad topic and there's not much I can go into here, it does show that the ICO does maintain its own standards, however.

The thing is I also found this request. It's actually a very interesting one as it looks at the risks of the people involved and when the home office was made aware.  It was denied because it was far too vast a request.  So to be nice, I’ve decided that I am going to get this information and see what I can do.  Stay tuned folks. 

I should point out that when I first started looking into this, I got confused with another Operation Motorman, which was a military operation in Northen Ireland...  They have a section too unthe the FoI act... are you smelling what I am smelling?

Robots in the NHS

Did you know that there are robots already working in the NHS?  This is pretty cool when you think about it.  It means that there are some things that robots can take over very (usually) very tired and overworked medical staff.  The one that I have been looking at is called the “Da Vinci Robot”.  It allow for a robot to do minimal invasion of the body but still do complex tasks.  The ethics of this are irrelevant for this post, but what people have found out about it are not.  

Mr Gillies has done a lot of the groundwork on this one.  If you look at his list of request he has asked two questions which are pretty much what we all want to know:

Please provide a document which explains:

- how many da Vinci robots are owned by the Trust

- the number and type of procedures performed with the assistance of the da Vinci robot in the most recent financial year.

From Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust they answered that they owned one which did 247 operations on the prostate. Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust answered that they owned one but that it had done 92 procedures. The fact that we can find out this information, again, make the FoI quite exciting.  We can find out how many operations a robot can do on us!  The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has two of these robots, by the way.

Some of you are probably thinking why do we need this?  I mean humans can do a lot of this work for us. Well when the question for the business reason for owning a Da Vinci robot was asked to Barts Health NHS Trust, they couldn't answer the question… because they didn't own one.

This doesn't mean, however that we cannot find this out ourselves. So I sent Newcastle Upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust a request asking them  for the cost\benefit analysis of their machines.  Wouldn't it be fun to find this out?

Some of you might be asking, aren't we thinking of doing this here in Wales?  Well, this is something that I am going to touch on again.  The thing is, I want to ask them all now, but I have sent them a number of requests lately and I want to give them all a bit of a break.  At time of writing, they still have yet to get to me on the matter of the building fully.

The thing that we can pull away from this, however, is that there are robots doing surgery in the UK and that these things are happening now!  Isnt this amazing to know that we can find this out. Sudden though, what happens if they mess up?  What happens if they kill someone?  How would they investigate this?  These are posts for another day.

The Courts

There are times when you ask questions and you get a result and then ignore it.  Then a little while later you find that the answer was a little but more than you were asking for.  Then you ask another question, review a previous request, and suddenly you have a whole bunch more questions.  This is definitely that.  I work with the courts a lot.  As a result, i’ve picked up a bit of legal stuff - due to the nature of my job - and it started me thinking.  What sort of things can we find out about the courts.

Firstly, the AMAZING radio series called ‘Law in Action’ (Legal issues for the layman).  Ages back, it talked about how civilians can get Court Martialed if they are in a military base.  If you think about it, it stand to reason.  You are a guest of the military and as a result have to live by the laws of the military.  SO I asked the Ministry of Defence the question:

‘Please can you tell me how many non military personnel have received a court martial in the last ten years’

Got the answer, looked at it, and thought nothing more of it.

Then a little while later, whilst thinking of new ideas, I thought ‘let’s ask the Ministry of Justice how many writs of Habeas Corpus (for those of you that do not know, it literally means bring me the body - it's used to check on someone's detention).  I go an answer and thought nothing more of it.

Then I went back to them and had a little read through…  And found a but more than I bargained for.  The reasons I say this is because both of them basically said that I can find the information elsewhere and referred me to their respective locations (Court Martial here, Habeas Corpus here).  

The Court martial one gave EVERY COURT MARTIAL TRIAL DONE LAST YEAR!  The one from Civil court showed the amount of Habeas Corpus applied (See table 3.31 column L for the total number of applications for Habeas Corpus submitted to the courts), but also gave ALL the data regarding the amount that it cost, amount of people sitting, and so on and so forth.

The amount of data on both of these is startling! You could spend month goings through each of these and find nuggets from everything (In case you are wondering, it looks at the Admiralty court, technology court, amount of claims, types of claims, successful and dismissed claims).

This is one of the time where the FoI is not needed.  If anything this is a testament to the amount of data that is published by the government, and is given freely to use. It amazing me, still, how much you can get without even sending an FoI, and how helpful Section 16 is.  There is one thing, however. There are two other request that I did not mention.  One of these is from the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom telling me that I had the wrong department, and one from the Her Majesty’s Courts and the Tribunals Service, which has yet to be answered (at time of writing).

Incidentally the amount of Habeas Corpus writs made in 2015 was 26...

Police fitness tests

The police have to undergo fitness tests.  It’s understandable when you think about it. The Police need to be able to run after criminals and make sure that they can catch them.  The big police officers you see in films are works of fiction (I hope) because of this test.  So why even think about it here?  Because I want to know what these fitness tests are and what happens to police officers when they fail.  

So I asked the top five most complainted about English Polices forces (giving the Welsh ones a bit of a break) the same questions, which are:

1.How often your officers have to perform fitness tests, as part of their duties

2.Details of the fitness test (What they are required to perform)

3.How many officers failed their fitness test from 01/01/15 to 01/01/16

4.What happens when an officer fails a fitness test.

Again this is a good indicator of how fit their forces are and what they are doing to try and bring this up.  Not only that, but what happens to those that fail.  Are they moved to another position, or something else?

Well The results are:

Name	Often	Failed
Greater Manchester Police	Mandatory - Annually	107
Thames Valley Police	Annually	Referred to website
Devon and Cornwall Constabulary	Annually (I think)	17
West Yorkshire Police	Annually	21
Avon and Somerset Constabulary

A couple of things before we move on. Manchester Police gave me ALL their fitness tests.  This includes their specialist training for firearms and things like that. Pretty cool eh?  I think that it is the failure rate is so high, because they are not just including the ones for non specialist forces.  Not only that but Devon and Cornwall gave me the answers from two other FoI request (Which they are entitled to do and has been done with me before) but these one included the average trouser leg measurement.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Now at time of writing I have yet to hear back from West Yorkshire and Avon and Somerset, but when I do I will update this section. The cool thing is we can see what the thin blue line has to do to maintain its slimness (See what I did there?).  Doesn't it interest you to see what we can discover if we start looking?

Super Computers

Super computers are pretty cool.  They are computers that can make trillions of calculations a second (teraflops) and can do them for all sorts of things from weather prediction to defence issues. The thing is supercomputer are going to be more and more needed when we look at the world now.  The massive amount of data that is coming in from the world, Britain needs to get more computing power (I think anyway) So what has been done on this matter?

A quick search through the pile found LITERALLY nothing for the search term “Super computer”. Hold on, just did another search and, again, nothing.  Great eh?  I’m a pioneer on this topic!  So what can we gather from this?  That no one other than me is interested in this, at the moment. The reasons that this is so interesting is because of this report from the BBC.  China building the biggest supercomputer?  Why can't Britain do the same?

Well, I asked the Cabinet office:

Please can you tell me if your department has any plans, or made any investment, into supercomputers since 01/01/15 until time of writing.

And the answer came back no.  Which is slightly surprising, because I would have thought that they might have discussed this issue with other departments.  Maybe that should have been a slightly different request, but never mind.

So I asked the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills the same question.  The answer came back yes. The actual answer was:

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has invested in High Performance Computing (HPC) at the Met Office. This totalled £97m across 15/16 and 16/17. The Met Office HPC business case was based on benefits of £2 billion over 5 years to the economy from the investment, a return on investment of 14 to 1.

Told you that it can help with the weather, didn't I? The link for more information is here.  The really interesting thing is that this was done for cost cutting too.  Why would this help to cut costs?  Again that is another FoI request for another time. However the thing that is really interesting is to think that the UK is trying to be one of the best for Weather and Climate science.  The reason that I say this is that very recently (At time of writing) the government has closed the Department of Energy & Climate Change (Well, been rolled into other departments).

The thing that comes to me, as I write this, is which other departments could do with some super computing. China used their super computer for defence purposes.  Could the Ministry of defence need some assistance?  Would the Civil Aviation Authority need some help too?  Only time will tell.

Playgrounds

Playgrounds are amazing things and help kids get out of the house and so something other than play on computer games. When councils invest in playgrounds, they invest in children's health, imagination, and general health. The problem is that most councils do not have the money to be able to maintain a lof ot them and as a result this has created a problems in how we keep them.  So, under the FoI, what can we find out about playgrounds?

Julie Parmenter has done an amazing amount of work on this one. She has asked (At time of writing) 160 FoI request asking about playground closures to councils (A request that will be asked to Welsh Councils too). The thing is it does paint a rather interesting picture.  A lot of parks have been closed, or allowed to fall into disrepair. It also shows how much it costs to repair and maintain them (220k for repairs in one year).  This is brilliant as it shows that council spend a heck of a lot on your kids and we didn't even know.

Playgrounds are more than just the one for little kids.  Adventure playgrounds are great for older kids.  Walton Adventure playground in Liverpool was investigated a little bit back and was asked two different questions:

1. How much did the climbing frame cost
2. What are the terms that need to be followed for the lottery grant.

£330,930.92 was spent on this playground and you can see the responses yourself on the other one. Did you figure that it cost this much to run a playground?  Did you even know what are the problems in building one?

So what about health and safety aspects?  Someone asked Thanet District Council about the legal aspects for a skate park, and they got it.  Isnt it amazing?  You would have thought that councils would not have been willing to show this, but they are probably concerned about personal injury claims and want to show what they are doing to help others.  Not only that, it shows that these fears have been looked into.  In fact there are guidelines that the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills use when they inspect playgrounds.  Did you know that?

What about child supervision when they arrive before school?  Clackmannanshire Council answered the question (From their council perspective) and gave a lot of detail. It is a school by school breakdown and how they look after the kids. Didn't know that they kept this information?  Me neither, but it shows that they are keeping an eye on this.

So what have we learnt about this?  Playgrounds have a LOT of money and legal issues attached to them that councils have to investigate.  They are willing to do this.  In this cash strapped time, councils do spend a LOT of money trying to make sure that your kids are safe, and active.

Maps

Maps are more than just things which have funny lines on them.  They help to direct you to places and help you plan for things. So why even think about this here?  Maps have been the subject of a numerous different request, and the amount that they look at is amazing.  Not only that, but since maps are used for planning we can find out  a lot about the organisation by simply seeing the “Maps” that they have created.

Want to see the maps that the environmental agency use to plan for flooding?  Here they are!  They show everything in this response from the modeling, information used to the way it is conducted.  It’s pretty cool.  Did you know that you could get this sort of stuff?  It also shows what this agency is planning.  TO be honest, I don't know the reasons that this person needed this BUT it shows that we can get it and shows what this agency is doing to help you.

So what about cycle paths in Essex Council?  Again, someone asked for all correspondence regarding the development of a cycle path. The great thing it they got it.  Why is this important?  Because again it shows what the council was thinking of when they developed the cycle path.  Not only that but it gives us an insight into what the council was looking for long term. Look at the planning documents and the communications, that there are some high hopes for this cycle path.

Same Council, different request, a map of all byways of open to all traffic.  What did they say?  Basically, they’re working on it.  The thing that is interesting in this document is that they state that they are working on an interactive webpage.  Again this person would want this due to the nature of their job (Or personal interest), the fact is thought it also shows that the council are developing new methods to show “old” data.

SO what about ambulances?  What about their maps? When someone asked the London Ambulance Fleet that question, they gave some pretty good information.  They explained how their maps are updates and that they took a project to check how up-to-date these maps were.  This again is interesting because, at some point, we are all going to need to call an ambulance. Wouldn't it be good to know that they know how to get to where you are?   

How about crime maps?  Here is some information about maps and the information that is used to generate crime maps.  Again, crime affects us all.  Whilst this information could be used badly, if it is brought into the wrong hands, it does mean that we now can develop our own strategies and, how knows, help the police force.

Maps are interesting things.  They help show us things that are there.  The more I think about maps, the more that I can see coming from them.  Remember that maps help us to plan for things. Think of the things that we could plan if we think of the potential of maps.

NHS buildings

I love the “Call Of Cthulhu” and Derren Brown's the “Seance”.  In one respect, they have a lot in common; they both deal with psychological horrors that twist the mind and make you question everything that you believe. The thing is, like all good horror, the setting is the most important part. The thing is, good horror plays to our psychological quirks and the tthings that we are all scared of (The dark, fire, things that creep in the night). One of the biggest things that scares me is a quiet hospital. They are like school.  They are quite scary places when there is no one around.

Why even think about this with you guys here?  Let's have a little look at how many empty hospitals there are in Wales.  There must be hospital that  is not being used in Wales…  So I asked all of the Welsh health boards the same thing:

1) How many buildings your trust owns

2) How many buildings your trust rents

3) How many buildings your trust own but have left empty

4) If the answer to question 3 is anything above 0, please can you tell me how long you have left them empty for

So here are the results:

Name	Owns	Rents	Empty	Since
Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board	55	10 (4 of which are for a pittance)	2	1 for 6 years 1 for 4 years
Hywel Dda Local Health Board	39	21	0	0
Cwm Taf Local Health Board	25	9	0	0
Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board	91	44	22	11 - redevelopment 3 - since 2013 5 - 2015
Aneurin Bevan Local Health Board	51	23 (In total)	1	2010
Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board	40	20	1	04/07/16

Hold my hands up, this is a stupid way to look at this matter. Realistically, I have asked about the property that each authority has.  I have shown that the authority has some building which are left unoccupied.  Realistically, each authority could been looking at the amount of property that they own (and don't) and look at how much they spend on these maintenance. Isnt it fun that you can find this stuff out, kids!

RIPA

A little while back I wrote about how many CCTV cameras each council authority had.  It was one of the most interesting ones to write, single because I couldn't believe the disparity between each authority (Pembroke having over a thousand). The thing is, CCTV isn't the only method for looking at what people are up to.  There is another piece of legislation called the Regulator Investigatory Practices Act (RIPA) 2000.  This is one of the most interesting pieces of legislation that you have NEVER heard of. It allows councils to be able to record people for various different situations.

There are RIPA’s critics, and those who are for it.  It has been used for less than honest uses, and as a result it means that it has got something of a bad reputation.  That being said has also been used for good and has been used for things such detecting fly tipping (which is disgusting) and benefit fraud. So why is this important for you?  Don't you want to know how your council monitors you?

RIPA is regulated by the Technical Advisory Board who oversees the applications of RIPA.  MY FoI request has yet to be answered on how many order have been made and how many complaints, but still… So lets have a think about this?  What are the guideline given to local councils when looking to make applications on RIPA? The department of communities and local government have not answered (At time of writing).  The Home Office have produced a guide to local councils on the use of RIPA, which is an interesting read and also shows us what they can and cannot do.

So I asked the Welsh Government and the National Assembly of Wales if they had also sent in RIPA orders.  Again at time of writing, nothing. This also got me thinking, could Welsh Councils have made RIPA orders, as well?  

Now the pay off; the results!

Name	Applied	Rejected	Costs
Blaenau	0	0	0
Bridgend	0	0	0
Caerphilly	7	0	0
Cardiff	0	0	0
Carmarthenshire	3	0	0
Ceredigion	0	0	0
Conway	0	0	0
Denbighshire	1	0	0
Flintshire	0	0	0
Gwynedd	0	0	0
Anglesey	1	0	0
Merthyr Tydfil	Referred To Website
Monmouth	0	0	0
Neath Port Talbot	0	0	0
Newport	0	0	0
Pembroke	0	0	0
Powys	0	0	0
RCT	4	0	0
Swansea
Torfaen	3	0	0
Vale Of Glamorgan
Wrexham	0	0	0

I was a little surprised at this, because I thought that it would be much higher than the numbers here.  This does not tell the whole story, however. The reasons is a number of councils, rather chillingly, said “We have not in this time period” and “Whenever we have applied for one, they have never been rejected”.  That being said a number of them said “We have never applied for a RIPA order”.  

The next question is, why have they applied for these order for...

Additional - The Welsh Government have taken one RIPA order