U.K. Police: six citizens were wrongly detained due to data mining errors last year

Six British citizens were wrongly detained or accused of crimes as a result of mistakes made by authorities when requesting access to Internet data, the U.K. Interception of Communications Commissioner said.

A report detailing law enforcement’s errors in the UK was published as interest in surveillance of ordinary citizens’ online activities runs high, in the wake of disclosures about the U.S. National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs.

In 2012, U.K. public authorities submitted 570,135 notices and authorizations for communications data, according to the report published on Thursday. The principal users of this communications data are still the intelligence agencies, police forces and other law enforcement agencies, wrote Paul Kennedy who served as the Interception of Communications Commissioner through last year.

However, because public authorities often make many requests for communications data in the course of a single investigation, the total figure does not indicate the number of individuals or addresses targeted, Kennedy said, adding that those numbers are not readily available, but would be much smaller.

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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044747/bad-internet-data-requests-led-to-6-wrongly-held-or-accused-in-uk.html#tk.rss_all

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