Editorial: A breach of PSNI data that should be impossible

There are so many of them it seems, often the result of large, unwieldy organisations working under pressure. But there are blunders that should never happen. Imagine if everyone's medical records, for example, were revealed online due to an error.

Last night Northern Ireland learned of shocking data breach. The incident happened in response to a Freedom of Information request. The response included a table that contained the rank and grade data and detailed information about each employee of the PSNI.

That this was viewable for up to three hours is a grievous mistake. Can the police now assess how many people saw the page? Or if it was downloaded, and if so how many times. The PSNI chief constable Simon Byrne is said to be on holiday. He will have to return. The Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd said there are no security concerns but in the absence of the aforementioned information it will be impossible for officers to be reassured. It was said to be a human error but information of that scale and importance should be handled only after multiple fail safes.

Mr Todd said that "we operate in an environment at the moment where there's a severe threat to our colleagues from Northern Ireland-related terrorism".

We certainly do. We operate in a environment in which dissident republican terrorists have been trying to kill officers for more than a decade, and occasionally succeeding, including another near murder earlier this year, and in which they can take succour from the vindication of the republican terrorists of yesterday.

This also happens at a time of low morale due to the PSNI leadership’s handling of incidents including its special treatment for the funeral of a terrorist in 2020.