UK Police Fined For Using Unencrypted Memory Sticks 100
An anonymous reader writes "The Information Commissioner's Office has filed a suit for £120,000 against the Greater Manchester Police because officers regularly used memory sticks without passwords to copy data from police computers and work on it away from the department. In July 2011, thousands of peoples' information was stolen from a officer's home on an unencrypted memory stick. A similar event happened at the same department in September 2010. 'This was truly sensitive personal data, left in the hands of a burglar by poor data security. The consequences of this type of breach really do send a shiver down the spine,' said ICO deputy commissioner David Smith."
Why are they even using USB flash drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
remoteing systems cost more then takeing data home (Score:2)
remoteing systems cost more then taking data home on a usb key.
computers provided my then has cost as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Remote terminals come out of the capital budget, virus removal comes out of the operations budget.
Re:Why are they even using USB flash drives? (Score:4, Insightful)
How orwellian can you get?
Re:Why are they even using USB flash drives? (Score:4, Informative)
They have to have police officers in American schools because gun crime is so bad. In the UK two kids will hit each other, in America a kid will bring a gun to school the next day. I actually thought someone was trolling me when I first heard that American schools have armed police officers.
http://www.ifpo.org/articlebank/school_officers.html [ifpo.org]
It all fights fire with fire. Totally backwards and yes, Orwellian.
Re: (Score:1)
"We have always been at war with Oceania"
bull-fucking-shit, there have NOT 'always' been kops at schools... ...and -yes- you are correct it is essentially yet another example of 'security theatre' that does little-to-nothing to keep us 'safe' (whatever that is), but certainly properly propagandizes those sheeple who roll over and give up all their ri
it IS orwellian, and it is counter-productive, and it is fascist, and it is yet another of the invisible-in-plain-sight reasons we are a militaristic society...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I seem to recall the officers used to be there in case of injuries, or catching kids smoking dope or whatnot. Nowdays they provide actual security too, it seems.
Makes sense to me, it's one of the few public offices that crams all of our children together on one place for such a long period of time. They should have been there anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
"Makes sense to me, it's one of the few public offices that crams all of our children together on one place for such a long period of time. They should have been there anyway."
Are you actually serious about this?
You know the rest of the world handles this by, you know, simply teaching kids to get along and just not kill each other right?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean they should be there to keep the kids in line. I meant they should be there because kids do stupid things, and if a kid breaks a leg an officer should be around just in case.
Likewise, if some loon wanted to be a crazy, you wouldn't want them to do it in the middle of a concentration of our youths. An officer present on site has a chance of stopping such a thing before any damage could be done.
You've also got kids who get abused and might fess up to a cop, parents being c
Re: (Score:2)
What use is a police officer if a kid breaks their leg? What you need is a paramedic. Do you have those stationed at every school as well, just in case? Or do you rely on the same 911 system everyone else does?
The problem with putting a police officer somewhere where there's nothing for them to do, is that someone will invent something for them to do.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone (eg parents) will be pointing the finger. An official who can claim something happened (or did not happen) would save the school a lot of trouble.
Re: (Score:1)
*facepalm* (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, a fine against the police department will certainly show them! Oh wait.. isn't it the taxpayers who pay for their budget... sooo, wouldn't that mean the taxpayers will wind up paying for this? Some of them, twice even -- once for the loss of data, and again when they have to pay for it with their next tax return (admitedly, mere fractions of a pence, but it's the principle of the thing). That seems like a terribly effective method of teaching those officers not to leave sensitive data around! Far more effective, I think, then suspending one without pay or additional training how how to properly handle sensitive information.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually it does, in typical government inefficiency it will take considerable resources to process this fine, and most likely there will be banking charges involved which means at least some of the money leaks into private hands.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually it does, in typical government inefficiency it will take considerable resources to process this fine, and most likely there will be banking charges involved which means at least some of the money leaks into private hands.
So this is basically a make work project for already wealthy lawyers and bankers. Fascism at its best.
Re:*facepalm* (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh wait... isn't it the government who receives the payment for the fine? ;)
All this does is shift money. The government is just paying itself. It doesn't cost the taxpayer any more.
To some extent.
However, in the UK the police are funded partially through central government funds and partially through local council funds. People here pay income tax, which goes to central government, and a smaller amount of 'council' tax, which is for use on local services, police, fire departments etc.
What these fines do, in effect, is to take money that residents of the area have paid to police the local area and give it back to central government. The health service is currently fighting a similar £325,000 (over $500,000) fine.
These organisations should be held accountable for privacy breaches, but taking money away from residents and patients is not the answer.
Re: (Score:2)
These organisations should be held accountable for privacy breaches, but taking money away from residents and patients is not the answer.
No, the answer is clearly to fire someone over this and make sure they also forfeit their pension. Fat chance of that happening though since the coppers in the UK operate completely above the law, any attempt to chastise them via the IPCC or whatever is really just window dressing.
Re: (Score:2)
SOCPA 2005 section 71 gives Police Authorities and Police Forces ("Services") immunity from prosecution if they turn evidence in any other proceeding; since this is a blanket immunity, then it's practically impossible to prosecute the Police by any other than charges at Common Law (ie, rape, robbery or murder).
HOWEVER:
This [bailii.org] case describes the first case decided on SOCPA sections 71 through 75; basically it allowed an individual to plead down, on appeal, by turning evidence in an ongoing case. His sentence we
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, fine the members of the department, so the individuals have to pay the fine. Then see how fast the situation changes.
YAY! Let's crack down! (Score:2)
Yeah, fine the members of the department, so the individuals have to pay the fine. Then see how fast the situation changes.
I am firmly convinced that draconian punishments are counter productive and belong in places like North Korea. Why not just fix the problem? There clearly is a need for carting data around on USB sticks despite other options, else people would not be doing it. How about issuing only laptops/desktops with an OS that has been fixed so as to be unable to export data to anything other than hardware encrypted USB sticks like Iron Key and then make officers responsible for their USB key like officers are responsi
Re: (Score:1)
"and then make officers responsible for their USB key like officers are responsible for their fire arm if they carry one "
I would expect officers would be fined and/or suspended w/o pay for losing their firearms. So, this would fall under the 'fine the officers directly for losing these USB sticks' that I suggested.
Yes, there is a whole training/configuration component, which may or may not have taken place already, but I'm sure there is still some need for access to unencrypted USB keys, so just disabling
wrong? (Score:3, Funny)
The correct spelling of "honour", "colour" etc. is clearly given in the ENGLISH dictionary, The words "honor" etc. are not English, but "American", Mr. Webster and his ilk have a lot to answer for, especially their failure to use "Z" in words such as enterprize.
Re: (Score:2)
If British English is so superior to American English, then why to you spell "trunk" b-o-o-t? I don't keep anything in boots except feet and socks, but trunks were around in carriages since before America was even discovered.
Re: (Score:2)
You can only suspend them if they were actually breaking the force's own rules on storing and transferring data. If they weren't then it's ultimately the force's collective responsibility for failing to put in place a proper data protection policy. You could place the blame entirely at the feet of the chief constable or the GMP Authority, however holding individuals responsible for collective failures never works well.
Re: (Score:2)
You could place the blame entirely at the feet of the chief constable or the GMP Authority, however holding individuals responsible for collective failures never works well.
It works better than holding nobody responsible.
Re: (Score:2)
how about the Official Secrets Act 1911? We are talking about *official Government documents*, after all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
strictly speaking, it is. Fixed penalty revenues go to the Treasury.
Re:*facepalm* (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, an organisation that collects fines for the taxpayer has levied a 12,000 pound fine against an organisation that is funded by the taxpayer.
The greater Manchester police will now have to apply for additional (taxpayer) funding to cover the additional cost of paying a fine to the taxpayers.
All of this should have been explained in the documentary Yes Minister.
Re:*facepalm* (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, a fine against the police department will certainly show them! Oh wait.. isn't it the taxpayers who pay for their budget
It'll come out of their budget. And in a bureaucracy, that's your status. It will certainly make the police take data security seriously, which is the point of the fine, not to collect money for the Exchequer to refund to taxpayers.
Re: (Score:2)
Is the IT contracted out? I'm guess GMP will try to recoup the fines from the private contractors.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the taxpayers will continue to pay twice until they vote for someone who will fix the problem. This is supposed to be an inducement to the taxpayer to vote for someone else. Unsurprising but dismaying that you don't get this.
Re: (Score:3)
Not exactly. The police force's overall budget will not be increased, so the taxpayer won't fork out any more, and the money will have to be found from elsewhere, such as the overtime budget for beat officers. It will thus hurt the force a little, and perhaps hurt the public because of the decreased level of service provided.
How can we ensure that the people responsible are the ones who actually carry the can in cases like this?
Sneakernet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really?
In 2012?
copy data from police computers and work on it away from the department.
Really? Aren't there such things as encryption and networks and the data staying on the bloody server?
--
BMO
They should have fined the individual officers (Score:2)
no way the union will let that happen (Score:2)
no way the union will let that happen and they will likely not even let the officers take the blame.
Any ways what is there story it was the only way to get there work done and the official way was not in place or there was none?
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect the Police Federation's argument would be that their members were just using the tools made available to them by the GMP. Unless the officers have been using personal devices to carry out police work, but in that case you'd have to check the rules didn't explicitly state they couldn't, otherwise the GMP almost certainly still has vicarious liability.
What's the solution (for Linux)? (Score:2)
Is there a way to (easily) turn off USB flash device ability in Linux (particularly Debian variants)?
All this while also preserving the ability to use USB mice and keyboards?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What's the solution (for Linux)? (Score:5, Informative)
Remove the usb-storage module, or blacklist it so that it cannot load.
Other classes of usb device have their own modules, which you can either leave alone or remove at your leisure if you want to use them (printers etc)...
You could also just disable the automount service, then no removable media will get mounted and you would need root in order to access it manually.
It's actually much easier than the various hoops people jump through to try and implement the same on windows.
Re: (Score:3)
There's hoops in earlier versions of Windows, but Server 2008 introduces a group policy object that makes it pretty easy:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/datacenter/disable-removable-media-through-windows-server-2008s-group-policy-configuration/452 [techrepublic.com]
Re: (Score:2)
And thus make your removable media unusable on anything other than a modern windows box... Hence the need for standards.
Re: (Score:2)
Great, only group policies are more for convenience rather than security, a lot of them are implemented very insecurely and are easily bypassed so that turning them on actually does more harm than good by creating a false sense of security.
I for one find this story hilarious. (Score:1)
A burglar invaded an officers home. :D
You'd expect the officer to have some form of protection.
Re: (Score:2)
but but but... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I get that you're going for a joke, but the sad thing is, this really shouldn't cost anything at all. Assuming the police are using a volume-licensed edition of either Win7 (sadly, it's quite possible that they're still on XP but I would truly hope not), they can use Bitlocker To Go, which is full-volume encryption for removable storage. It's typically protected with a passphrase (though you can use any of a number of things, including multi-factor auth with smartcards and the like as well) and utilizes ver
Re: (Score:1)
If they are using the same supplier as the rest of the Government, they will be running XP and IE6. Sad but true.
The cabal that supplies IT to the UK Gov makes G4S look good.
There is a Gov approved product for encryption and control of removable media which I won't disclose here, but it is often bypassed as it is 'fiddly' for the end user.
Anon for obvious reasons.
You're not taking into account "government" price (Score:4, Interesting)
They really should have known better - the National Health Service has been lambasted on several occasions for similar data leaks and has thoroughly learned it's lesson. We are not permitted to mount unencrypted USB volumes any more.
But the encrypted drives we are required to use if we need to transfer data are purchased from a central contract - and cost us £64 ($103) for a 2GB flash unit. I'm not surprised if there is a certain reluctance amongst the police to purchase that kind of deal.
When I first saw that price I assumed they were some kind of military grade unit with a hardware encryption controller. They are not, they're just partitioned, with a custom driver in the first, plaintext, partition. So they are taking units that were probably about £5 (at the time) and making a very substantial mark-up.
Our standard advice on what to do with an encrypted drive after we're done with it is not to just wipe the key block, making the data into worthless noise, but to physically destroy it. I'm willing to bet that our friendly encrypted storage vendor thought that one up.
As you quite rightly say, there are other options. I estimated that I could knock together a solution using TrueCrypt - including all the features that the current solution has, like key escrow - and sell them for about £15 a go. You can't even *buy* 2GB flash drives at my usual retailer any more, or even 4GB units, so they'd have to put up with having 4 times the capacity. But I'd still be making a good margin - those 8GB drives are now around £5 retail. And the TrueCrypt solution has the advantage of working on every platform, not just Windows.
Re: (Score:2)
The users around here, even if they managed to enter a password in Truecrypt, would just as happly click "password-hint.exe". And for that reason alone, I'm out.
We still burn CDs here ffs. It's the default answer to moving files around. We have 10,000 users on the network. A netwrok designed to move files around.
Standard... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that there is simply no standard for encrypted removable storage... It seems every vendor of "encrypted" flash drives ships their own proprietary, usually windows-only binaries on the stick which may or may not work, and may or may not require various levels of privilege in order to install, and may or may not be full of all manner of security holes.
Pity the poor consultant carrying a windows laptop that contains all these various encryption drivers installed because he never knows what proprietary encryption scheme the next client will be using.
USB storage is a good standard, you can plug such a device into almost anything and it will be mounted and read... What we need is a similar standard for encrypted storage where you can plug it into almost anything, enter a password and it mounts without having to install any non standard drivers.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm sure we'd need some way of enforcing vendors to use it though.
Re: (Score:3)
Not really. Ideally you need a system which marries some degree of security with a mechanism to recover lost keys. Few organisations will accept "you lost the password to your encrypted drive? Then you're stuffed. Not even MI5/NSA/FBI/B&Q can help."
Most commercial encryption products include one or more "user has forgotten their password" recovery mechanisms for exactly this reason.
Re: (Score:2)
TrueCrypt offers this feature ; you back up the key block (which at that time has a password known to the administrator), and just restore it in the event of a user password loss incident. It even has the appropriate UI to let you do it.
The commercial product we've used implements this feature by storing redundant key blocks encrypted with the administrators password, which is much less secure - once you know that password, you can access the files on any system.
The other method of key recovery it supports
Re: (Score:2)
It does, but AFAICT last time I checked, TrueCrypt makes it relatively easy for the end user to change the encryption key that's used and you can't stop the user from doing this. As soon as they do, the backup key block is useless.
I accept that commercial products that implement other key recovery tools are by definition less secure; what I don't accept is that they are so much less secure you may as well not bother with them in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
When you change the password, you change the only
Re: (Score:1)
You know TrueCrypt has a timeout setting as well, right?
You also don't need to pay TrueCrypt every time you upgrade your drive.
"Please Note: Your Encrypt Stick license cannot be transfered to a different drive once activated"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No it doesn't, security through obscurity doesn't work.
People use standard algorithms for encryption, that doesn't make them any easier to hack.
With a widely used standard, it would be thoroughly audited by many people and organisations...
With all manner of proprietary crap, how do you know that the one you pick won't have gaping flaws? Take a look at http://www.digit-labs.org/files/presentations/sec-t-2010.pdf [digit-labs.org] and some of the other stuff on digit-labs.org for examples of flaws in proprietary encryption pro
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that people are still using removable storage. In my organization it's been banned for years - there's simply no justification for the huge risk involved in letting your data literally walk out the door, encrypted or not (and that doesn't even consider what walks back in on those sticks the next morning). VPN & remote desktop setups are cheap and easy. Use them.
Very Common Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the 90s my home in Canberra (Australia's capital and a government town) was burgled. The first, and I mean very first, thing the police asked on arrival was, "I there any classified information involved?" I was standing there in my Air Force uniform, so I guess it was a reasonable question. Nothing I was working at the time could even remotely be considered safe to take home, encrypted or not, so the answer was a no-brainer. I guess I was dismayed that the event was common enough that the automatic response had kicked in though. Some things, it seems, don't change.
How about... (Score:2)
...guaranteed general population jail time for ANY police officer found to be responsible for ANY data leak?
It would surely be incentive to properly secure data and make sure it fucking stays that way!
Worth digging a little deeper (Score:2)
Every single time I've heard about a large fine like this being imposed for breach of data protection law, there's been background information - usually aggravating circumstances that make the transgression rather worse.
And so it is here:
The ICO found that a number of officers across the force regularly used unencrypted memory sticks, which may also have been used to copy data from police computers to access away from the office. Despite a similar security breach in September 2010, the force had not put restrictions on downloading information, and staff were not sufficiently trained in data protection.
This wasn't one rogue officer breaching policy, this was a complete failure by management to implement a policy some two years after it had become pretty obvious that such a policy needed to exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually Memory Stick is a Sony trademark for their proprietary flash media.
per wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
If you refer to DIMMs as "memory sticks" you're just as guilty as the submitter and editor are of promulgating confusion.
Wait a second (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you think the thief even knew it was a police officers home and didn't just carry out a random burglary?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's so special about a cop's house? I live in the US, there's a police officer lives down the block from me. Now obviously, as a burglar, I wouldn't try and break in while he's home (cruiser parked out front) - but if he's not? House isn't anything special, doesn't even look like it has an alarm.