Met ordered to improve safeguards after two preventable data breaches
The UK's data protection regulator has criticized London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) after its officers handed a victim's stalker details about her new phone number and home address, among other failures.The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) today issued the MPS with an enforcement notice [PDF] and a reprimand over the two incidents, which occurred in 2024.Enforcement notices include specific steps offending organizations must take to meet their data protection duties under UK law, while reprimands serve as official warnings concerning breached data protection laws.
The ICO outlined two major incidents that were caused by failures at the MPS, but added that they were not isolated and "reflected wider weaknesses in MPS policies, procedures, and assurance arrangements for handling sensitive personal information."
The first involved a man subject to an interim Stalking Protection Order (SPO), which restricted him from contacting his victim.An MPS superintendent authorized an application for an interim SPO in January 2024 concerning a man who had been arrested the previous year on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications offences.The man was also, at the time, subject to bail conditions that included a prohibition on contacting the victim and their friends and family.As a result of the man's actions, the unnamed victim had to change her phone number and home address.Despite warnings that all personal information had to be redacted from the copy handed to the defendant, officers included unredacted witness statements and other documents.These exposed the new address and phone number of the victim, and those of her friends and family members.Within days, after the man fled the UK, breaching his bail conditions, the victim reported to the MPS that the defendant had contacted her on her new phone number.A full SPO was issued in May 2024, and the stalker was arrested in July upon re-entering the UK. He was later charged with stalking offenses and imprisoned following a guilty plea.
