CPS fined £325,000 after losing victim interview videos

[Angilion]

Yes, that was a rhetorical question. I was making a point that they shouldn't be where possible. Physical media is suspectible to loss, tampering, theft and data corruption. Interviews should be encrypted at the point of recording so they are never in plain text, and automatically stored in a system that is protected from all the above. Home users have such systems in place for their family photos ffs.

It's so normal for supposedly secure systems to be compromised and the data exposed that it doesn't even make the news unless it involves at least tens of millions of people and probably not even then. It's such a common occurence that it's not news. At least with physical media the data exposure is always very limited.

It would be very expensive to impose a single system on every police force, the CPS and every other aspect of the legal system. Far more than £325,000.

Are digitally altered recordings admissible in court? If not, you'd have to get that changed too.

 

[Energize]

It's so normal for supposedly secure systems to be compromised and the data exposed that it doesn't even make the news unless it involves at least tens of millions of people and probably not even then. It's such a common occurence that it's not news. At least with physical media the data exposure is always very limited.

It would be very expensive to impose a single system on every police force, the CPS and every other aspect of the legal system. Far more than £325,000.

Are digitally altered recordings admissible in court? If not, you'd have to get that changed too.

When implemented properly the risk of breaches is much less than with physical media. If the data had been encrypted the loss would not have had the effect it did.

Of course it would be more expensive, that is the price of doing things properly as opposed to bodging it with unencrypted dvds. What sort of attitude is that, "well it's cheaper for us to pay the fines so we'll do that instead of securing sensitive data".

A dvd is a digitally altered recording already, it undergoes MPEG2 compression which results in an unpredictable amount of data loss, encryption doesn't alter the underlying recording anymore. Since encrypted files are used as evidence in court cases I don't see why there should be an issue.

 

[Burnsy2023]

Who even uses DVD's in 2018?

Audio cassettes were the norm up until a couple of years ago.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

How embarrassing. Not even encrypted.

 

[TJM]

A technical solution that would allow for the secure and completely reliable playback of digital recordings by the courts, police, prosecutors, high-street defence solicitors and self-represented defendants would be very expensive while the criminal justice system has been bled dry by budget cuts.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done but explains why you end up with DVDs being physically moved about. There is no money for an alternative.

 

[Burnsy2023]

A technical solution that would allow for the secure and completely reliable playback of digital recordings by the courts, police, prosecutors, high-street defence solicitors and self-represented defendants would be very expensive while the criminal justice system has been bled dry by budget cuts.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done but explains why you end up with DVDs being physically moved about. There is no money for an alternative.

Apparently, this is being developed, so I've heard.

 

[Angilion]

When implemented properly the risk of breaches is much less than with physical media. If the data had been encrypted the loss would not have had the effect it did.

But it wouldn't be implemented properly. It never is. The multitude of data breaches that routinely occur do so with organisations that claimed to be implementing it properly. Even if it was implemented properly (which it wouldn't be), there would be a lot of people involved so it wouldn't be implemented properly for long. Also, the scale of data breaches would increase a great deal. It wouldn't be one report on paper left on a train or 15 interviews left on DVDs. It would be thousands, tens of thousands.

Of course it would be more expensive, that is the price of doing things properly as opposed to bodging it with unencrypted dvds. What sort of attitude is that, "well it's cheaper for us to pay the fines so we'll do that instead of securing sensitive data".

A normal one. Also a pragmatic one, as the extra cost would have to come from somewhere and that would probably result in further reduction in policing.

A dvd is a digitally altered recording already, it undergoes MPEG2 compression which results in an unpredictable amount of data loss, encryption doesn't alter the underlying recording anymore. Since encrypted files are used as evidence in court cases I don't see why there should be an issue.

Good point.

Apparently, this is being developed, so I've heard.

So it might happen in 10 years at double or triple the estimated cost and it probably won't work. But some companies will make a profit from it anyway, as billions of pounds will be wasted on it.

Or maybe the government will get a major IT project right for once. Nowadays, ministers are bound to have at least some knowledge of IT...oh, wait. These are the people who think that hashtags on Facebook will stop child porn, for example. They don't even know what they're asking for, let alone how to ask for it and evaluate proposals in an effective way.