back to article Queensland creep cops charged with snooping through police records

Police in the northern Australian state of Queensland have been busted accessing citizens' police files a huge number of times, in some cases without authorisation. The breaches include the accessing of a bikini model and social justice warrior's QPrime database file some 1,435 times. Former Miss Bikini World contestant Renee …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Useful...

    "There have already been over a thousand Australian police officers charged for unlawfully snooping on vulnerable individuals." sounds like a good spin to put on this.

    Editing to add: "The overwhelming majority targetting women under 30."

  2. chivo243 Silver badge
    Trollface

    police records database

    It's the Farcebook of Law Enforcement!

  3. RIBrsiq
    Trollface

    Former Miss Bikini World contestant Renee Eaves

    It would be, you must admit, the perfect cover for an international criminal master mind!

    Maybe we should review the file one more time, just to make sure nothing was missed...?

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Former Miss Bikini World contestant Renee Eaves

      @ RIBrsiq

      I think they must have misunderstood the following:

      “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

      (Aaron Levenstein)

      and disregarded the Statistics part. Or may be not - they must have been looking up the Vital Statistics.

    2. Oengus

      Re: Former Miss Bikini World contestant Renee Eaves

      the perfect cover for an international criminal master mind

      Not really a lot of a cover... but then people won't be focusing on her mind either.

    3. phuzz Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Former Miss Bikini World contestant Renee Eaves

      "the perfect cover for an international criminal master mind"

      Even better if you then hire a guy as the face of your organisation. Find someone who's bald, has a foreign accent, and maybe a scar, perhaps a fondness for hairless cats or snakes.

      Then, while international super-spies try to kill him, you can sit in the background in your bikini, pretending to be just eye candy, but secretly getting on with the far-too-important-to-leave-to-a-bloke business of taking over the world!

      I think I've just written the plot of the next Bond film, cheque to the usual address please Sony.

      Paris, because, well it's obvious isn't it? she's the next Blofeld. >>>>>>>

  4. Phil Kingston

    It's OK though, all that metadata that your tax dollars are/will be paying ISPs to retain on your habits and will be available to many thousands of civil servants and their subcontractors without a warrant is perfectly safe. It won't be mis-used or accessed unnecessarily.

  5. Nixinkome

    Views

    Does she want more...?

  6. Oengus

    And these are supposed to be our best and finest... I would hate to see our worst.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's Quensland, mate.

      They don't do best and finest in Qld.

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        I hate how our police departments have gone from "People who want to server the community and protect people" to "People who want power and are haven't shown they shouldn't be trusted with it yet"

  7. Winkypop Silver badge
    Pint

    To be fair to PC Plod

    They were only searching for XXXX

  8. alain williams Silver badge

    What is rare about this ...

    is that it has been exposed. A lot more like this happens but no one ever knows about them. The current spy's charter going through Parliament will make this harder to detect.

    (OK: I know that this is OZ and not the UK, but cops/... are much the same the world over.)

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: What is rare about this ...

      !is that it has been exposed. A lot more like this happens but no one ever knows about them. The current spy's charter going through Parliament will make this harder to detect."

      Yes, that's what I came here to say too. You only ever hear of these cases when the "victim" does their own research and makes a complaint. So where is the Police access monitoring system and what is it doing?

      1. ma1010
        Unhappy

        Re: What is rare about this ...

        What happens is the whole thing is handled administratively, not criminally, and the perpetrator gets a minor slap on the wrist. I recall one case of a law enforcement person who was riding along with another and kept using the car's computer to look up the license plates of attractive females to get their ages, addresses, etc. He got caught only because the system flagged all these lookups as abnormal, so it was investigated.

        In California, using law enforcement computer systems for non-law enforcement purposes is a felony, and everyone with access to those systems is told this fact when they are first given access and thereafter every year get a written reminder and are required to sign off that they are aware of the law.

        He got a reprimand and a brief unpaid vacation.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Web page here

    Renee Eaves webpage

    She comes over as a credit to Australia, unlike the police.

    1. x 7

      Re: Web page here

      thats just her blogpage

      her business webpage is at http://reneeeaves.com/

      and rather gives the impression of an OTT self publicist.

  10. Warm Braw

    Police would ordinarily access such a file less than 50 times

    You mean in Oz you would expect the police to review your file 5 times every year?

    Given that QPRIME contains records on road crash, crime (reported crime victims, reported crime offenders, prosecutions of offenders and offender criminal histories), missing persons and domestic violence applications/orders that either suggests that the population of Queensland consists entirely of prolific criminals or that the police are constantly nosing unnecessarily.

    1. Tom 38

      Re: Police would ordinarily access such a file less than 50 times

      <insert crude "Australia/convicts" joke here>

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        "<insert crude "Australia/convicts" joke here>"

        The thing you have to understand is that Australia wasn't used as a place to put all their actual criminals, but rather ta place to get rid of the 'inconvenient persons' crowding up the cities such as the poor, people that questioned the motives of politicians, and people the police / government just didn't like for one reason or another (like people that were just a bit too curious about the relationship between the governor and a local barmaid; or that barmaid after the governor got bored with them).

  11. banalyzer
    Facepalm

    simpler

    Would it not just be a lot simpler to put her name into an image search?

    The intelligence level seems to be no better than over here either

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What's the problem ?

    They were only looking at Meta Data.

  13. Pete4000uk

    What would they have got here in the UK?

    1. adnim

      A brush

      and help lifting the carpet?

  14. Bernard M. Orwell

    "Nothing to Fear, Nothing to Hide" roundly disproved by this case (and all the related ones).

  15. GrumpyKiwi
    Big Brother

    The finest police force money can buy

    Queensland's police force were notoriously corrupt for a very long time - they were known as the finest police force you could buy in Australia.

    Clearly despite all attempts to change the culture, not much has changed except that technology has made it easier for them to harass.

  16. JustWondering
    Unhappy

    Over a 1000 officers?

    So much for the "few bad apples" pitch

  17. herman

    What? Bikini model stalked by police? Show a picture - or it didn't happen.

  18. TheJokker

    This article is useless without pictures...

  19. Grunchy Silver badge

    Can you pay a police officer to obtain private information about somebody you're interested in?

    They should set up a service desk, I hope they make the fee reasonable...

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