A man was charged on Aug. 19 with terror offences for possessing documents linked to the police data leak in Northern Ireland earlier this month.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said it had charged a 50-year-old man with possession of documents or records likely to be useful to terrorists and possession of articles for use in terrorism.
It comes after PSNI accidentally published the personal details of its entire workforce online and confirmed that dissident republicans got hold of the information.
PSNI hasn’t identified the man it charged.
He was arrested for questioning on Aug. 18 following a police search in the Dungiven area in Londonderry and is due to appear at Coleraine Magistrates’ Court on Aug 21.
“As is normal procedure, all charges will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service,” PSNI noted.
PSNI also arrested a 39-year-old on Wednesday following a search in Lurgan, County Armagh. The man has since been released on bail.
The leaked workforce database, which includes the initials, surnames, and employment details of some 10,800 police officers and civilian staff members, was published by mistake in a response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request on a public website that were seeking the number of officers and staff of all ranks and grades across the organisation.
Up to 40 officers at MI5’s headquarters in County Down are reportedly among the names.
The information were publicly accessible for up to three hours.
Two days later, PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne said the police was aware of claims that dissident republicans were in possession of some of the information circulating on WhatsApp.
On Monday, Mr. Byrne said PSNI was “confident” that the dataset was in the hands of dissident republicans and assumed they would use the list to “generate fear and uncertainty as well as intimidating or targeting officers and stuff.”
Also on Monday, several pages were put on a wall of a library building near the Sinn Fein office in the Falls Road.
According to the party’s policing spokesperson Gerry Kelly MLA, the documents contained information of “substantial number” of police officers and staff, though their names were removed. They also included a photo of him and “a statement saying in large writing ‘Gerry, we know who your mates are.’”
The data breach is particularly worrying in Northern Ireland as officers in the region are under threat from terrorists, with the current assessed level of threat at severe, meaning an attack is highly likely.
Earlier this year, Mr. Byrne said he received briefings almost every day about plots to attack and kill his officers, adding that the threat from dissident republicans remained a “real worry.”
Following the incident, Mr. Byrne said that a group had been established to look into staff security.
The force said on Friday that “a range of agencies” are helping them to “address the various issues resulting from the data breach.”
More Breaches
A number of data breaches have come to light in the past two weeks in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the UK.PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd confirmed on Wednesday that a police-issue laptop was stolen from a car near Belfast on July 6 along with other documents including information identifying some 200 officers.
On Friday, Mr. Todd confirmed that an officer drove off with a laptop and a notebook on top of their car on Thursday and the material fell “on the foreshore stretch of the M2 motorway” at around 4:15 p.m.
It’s believed the laptop didn’t survive the fall.
Mr. Todd said it was “immediately deactivated and has been recovered.”
Not all pages of the notebook were recovered. By Saturday, a “significant amount” had been found but still “some sections remain outstanding,” Mr. Todd said.
“Our enquiries are continuing to establish the contents. It was confirmed that some of the outstanding pages, which contained details of some officers and staff, have not yet been recovered. We have contacted those involved to make them aware.” he said.
So far, “42 officers and staff have been specifically identified as being affected and directly contacted by line managers and senior management. In addition, the entire Branch affected has been informed about the circumstances of the incident.”
He also said PSNI was in contact with the Office of the Information Commissioner and had advised the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the Department of Justice.
Police forces in Norfolk and Suffolk told Sky News revealed on Tuesday that a technical issue has led to some raw data being included in some FOI responses.
The forces noted that the data was hidden from anyone opening the files, but admitted that it should not have been included.
