Ben Lowry: London must carry out its own review into disastrous PSNI breach, to assess if police here can be relied upon to protect top secret data

The teenager had been undergoing leukaemia treatment in Nottingham where two doctors mistakenly injected the drug into his spine instead of into a vein. Two doctors were later charged with manslaughter.

I remember discussing this with an expert doctor at the time who was outraged that two juniors had been administering such an important and dangerous procedure that should only have been carried out by a consultant.

We do not know if anyone PSNI officers will suffer any harm as a result of the catastrophic data breach, but everyone will be hoping that the dissident boast to have got hold of the list of officers is just bravado. I would imagine that it is unlikely that anyone with ill intent was able to get hold of the highly confidential information in the small number of hours that it was posted online, unless the breach was deliberate.

As soon as I heard of it I wondered whether that might be so. After all we live in a society in which there was terrorist spying at Stormont, a terrorist break-in to Castlereagh police station, and a massive terrorist cash heist at a bank in the centre of Belfast. Such operations tend to be possible only with internal support within the organisation that is targeted. Obtaining the names and work locations of officers would be a massive triumph for dissident republican terrorists and, as we report today, would scare many Catholic officers or would-be officers away from the PSNI , enabling dissidents to depict the PSNI as sectarian (in much the same way that IRA intimidation of Catholics into not joining the RUC helped keep the numbers of such officers low and so helped their claim that the RUC was hopelessly sectarian – a claim that they have succeeded in planting retrospectively in the minds of a younger generation of nationalists across the island).

So after the data breach was revealed I spoke to police officers who worked in the Troubles and more recently. It transpired that I was not alone in being concerned at such a possibility. But I should emphasise that no such concerns were grounded in any information on this breach but rather in a weary awareness of the ways in which republicans try to access top secret information held by the state, and occasionally succeed. Those familiar with the circumstances of the PSNI data breach are emphasising that it was an innocent error.

It is relief to hear that. But it flags up a different problem – that of such incompetence in handling information of the utmost sensitivity that many lives could have been put at risk. Is it not then appropriate for the full apparatus of the state to respond with the sort of vigour with which the criminal justice system responds to errors in the health service that put life at risk?

A lot of politicians have droned on this week about the need to reassure officers and review procedures and so on. But how can you reassure officers if there is no honest reassurance that can be given? This needs a much more robust response than that.

It is being reported that Cumbria police have mistakenly revealed the names and salaries of officers there. But while the two breaches, that in Northern Ireland and that in NW England, might be similar in terms of how they happened they are not similar in impact. Officers in Cumbria are not being targeted by terrorists.

It is beyond shocking that the names of several dozen PSNI officers who worked with MI5 have been divulged. This is information that some mainstream but retired republican paramilitaries would love to have for the purposes of keeping tabs on people. It is positive gold dust to current dissident terrorists.

This episode could add to the chill factor that is it at great risk of developing across the security and intelligence bodies with regard to NI, such as a military that has been chased for Troubles allegations. How will MI5 feel now? What about informers, who have been so vital in saving life, past and present?

This is a huge disaster, in which it is not good enough to shake our heads and say in a chorus about the need to learn lessons, followed by a return to a slightly improved normal. On page 4 of today’s print paper ( link to web version ) the points made by the KC Jim Allister on the questions that need to be answered now, ahead of a proper investigation of this outrage. Were junior inexperienced staff allowed to handle information that, if leaked, could lead to either mass departures from the police or to loss of life.

It is to be hoped that the government is conducting its own review of this, with top intelligence experts at the heart of it. Are there security powers that need to be pulled back to London?