Naomi Long takes aim at 'misreporting and inaccuracies' over publication of police officer names
Justice minister Naomi Long has tonight said she wants to “clarify” what she termed “outright inaccuracies” about a widely-reported story concerning the publication of police officers’ names.
She was reacting to the fallout from the appearance of 41 PSNI data breach victims’ names on online court lists this week – something which has been dubbed “an avoidable and embarrassing error” by the Police Federation.
The officers were all taking a court case based on the accidental release of their information in the 2023 PSNI data breach, including surnames, initials, ranks, and locations.
It is typical for a court case to be titled something like “Joe Bloggs, John Smith, and Dave Jones v the Chief Constable of the PSNI”, and listings of such upcoming cases are publicly available online.
The names were removed on Tuesday night.
Tonight, Mrs Long said in a statement: “I wish to address some of the misconceptions and outright inaccuracies being purported by some on social media.
“Firstly, there has been absolutely no data breach by my department. Publishing court lists is a routine process, and no data has been released in error.
“It is well known that court details, other than those relating to family proceedings, are routinely listed publicly online.
"The exception to this, is when a request for anonymity is made to a judge.
"That request would be made by a legal representative or parties to proceedings. It is only a judge that can grant that anonymity and it is only a legal representative that can make the request.
"Staff in the NI Courts and Tribunals Service have no authority or legal standing to make such a request, let alone a decision of that nature.
"To suggest otherwise is misleading and completely false.”
On the decision to remove the court list from the website, she said: “My department was alerted to the listing by one of the parties to the cases and it was decided at that point to temporarily suspend the list while it was refreshed.
"This was a precautionary measure and was not because an error had been made.
“I hope this clarifies the situation and puts an end to online speculation and misreporting.”