SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A former Australian Federal Police counter-terrorism officer has pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking using restricted databases:
The officer, Roman Eiginson, stood trial for stalking an ex who had left him when he married a Russian woman. As the Canberra Times reports, 53-year-old Eiginson is a former Soviet soldier who came to Australia in the early 1990s and joined the AFP in 2001.
Eiginson used the AFP's PROMIS (Police Realtime Online Management System) database to get the addresses of the ex-girlfriend and her new partner. Due to face six charges in the ACT Magistrates Court yesterday, Eiginson entered his guilty plea to two charges and the prosecution offered no evidence on the others, the Canberra Times reports.
The AFP is one of the most prominent supporters of mass data retention in Australia, but this isn't the first time in recent years it's had trouble policing its own officers' handling of data. In 2014, an officer in NSW was charged with a range of offences including two counts of divulging proscribed information, and four counts of unauthorised access to data.
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by SanityCheck on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:24AM
I am shocked, shocked and appalled that there is some sort of accountability in government!
Yes such a "tool" should never exist, but the fact the guy was caught misusing it, and prosecuted is a silver lining I thought I'd never see.
On a side-note, I used to work for a "Too-Big-TO-Fail" bank about a decade ago doing due diligence on wealthy clientele. Which basically involved using every public and private database to find out everything we can about the person and their moneys. After all the government put it on us to make sure we were not accepting money form terrorists. Needless to say it was trivial to find out all this kind of information about anyone, including their social security, where they live, where they lived, what they have ever been tried and convicted of, what property they own, where they travel, how much money they have, and what do they tend to vote. Mind you this was more than a decade ago. Anyway, quite a few people got fired the second they turned their searches where they should not, as the search logs were audited by management. Of course you could theoretically get by if you worked a case that had similar name or location, etc, but anyone who was dumb enough to misuse these resources usually was not too cleaver.
I was disgusted that this information even existed, but ti was a job that paid bills and a very decent one at that. But of course they worked us to death by slashing our workforce (through burnouts and no rehires) and at the same time the bank merged and doubled our workload) so I quit. I can't even imagine how that program has evolved by now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CortoMaltese on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:54AM
Yes such a "tool" should never exist, but the fact the guy was caught misusing it, and prosecuted is a silver lining I thought I'd never see.
He was just a cop (okay "Federal Police counter-terrorism officer") so he was low enough on the rung to be prosecuted without affecting anyone important.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:07AM
Indeed. From Canberra Times [canberratimes.com.au]:
He was arrested by ACT police in April after his ex-girlfriend accused him of stalking...Investigations revealed he had allegedly accessed an AFP database to collect information on the woman's new partner in an apparent attempt to split them up.
So he was first accused by his girlfriend, then investigated, then caught. This wasn't an automatic flag: if his girlfriend had never accused him, we can probably infer that he never would have been caught.
So don't be mistaken: he isn't on trial because he was stalking his girlfriend. He is on trial because he made the police look bad. You can break as many laws as a police officer as you want, as long as you don't ruin it for the rest of the police. His "getting caught" makes it harder for the other police to stalk their interests, so of course they are going to prosecute him.