It is symptomatic of the dire state of IT and data integrity in the UK that the supply of faulty data by mobile operator O2 to the police has generated little press attention so far. Britain’s captains of hindsight are currently preoccupied with the scandal of faulty systems prompting the conviction of a string of innocent postmasters who were wrongly accused of fraud. However, it should be equally appalling that people could be convicted of crimes because a telco gave the police streams of error-strewn data. It is also troubling that there may be criminals who remain free because of the inaccuracies in data provided by O2, the UK operation of Spanish multinational group Telefonica. In a rare display of interest in what should be a scandal, Computer Weekly spoke with a series of experts about the extent of the problems with O2’s data and the potential ramifications.
Police specialists are understood to be manually checking thousands of datasets supplied by the telco for intelligence purposes, counter-terrorism, or for use in criminal investigations.
Errors in communications data obtained from O2 by police and intelligence agencies mean that unique identity numbers — known as the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number — that identify each mobile phone handset are not reliably recorded.
The fault, which affects mobile phone data supplied by O2 dating back over 18 months to mid-2022, means mobile phone handsets and messages could be attributed to the wrong handset. The error could also impact mobile phone location data.
It is a sign of the low levels of competence within the police that an issue which was first reported by the Evening Standard two months ago still has not led to any advice being given to lawyers. Inaccuracies with only a small portion of O2’s data could result in unsafe convictions being overturned. The mobile operator serves 24 million phone users, whilst phone data is reportedly used as evidence for 95 percent of all serious organized crime investigations overseen by the UK’s public prosecutors. The only small relief is that the UK legal system is so generally broken that relatively few cases dating back to 2022 will have reached court yet.
Look here for the full Computer Weekly article about errors in the data given to the police by O2.
