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  This was refused mainly because the information was out of date and could not be given and didn't have the legal right to do so (The ICO maintaining its own standard here).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?