PSNI breach: is the UK taking data security seriously enough?
Accidental release of personal details of 10,000 Northern Irish police employees could have lethal consequences

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
It was confirmed this week that dissident republicans had obtained reams of sensitive information about the staff of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), following a major data breach.
As a result of a botched response to a Freedom of Information request, the surname, initial, rank or grade and department of 10,000 PSNI employees was briefly published online last week. Chief Constable Simon Byrne warned the data could be used for “intimidating or targeting officers and staff”; and this week information from the breach was posted on a Belfast library wall, along with a threat. The Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, urged them to “exercise maximum vigilance”.
Separately, analysts warned that data stolen in a cyberattack on the Electoral Commission could be used to target voters with disinformation. Data relating to some 40 million people is thought to have been compromised in the cybersecurity breach, which came to light last week, in which hackers gained access to copies of electoral registers containing the names and addresses of all registered UK voters.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What did the papers say?
It is hard to imagine a “more serious data breach” than the leak of PSNI officers’ details, said The Daily Telegraph. A spreadsheet that included officers’ places of work and the identities of staff based with MI5 seems to have been published in response to an innocuous request about the total numbers employed by the organisation. PSNI blamed “human error”, but it seems more systemic than that. Why wasn’t the data more carefully guarded, and encrypted? Why was it so easy to publish it in error? PSNI staff are now in real danger, said the News Letter (Belfast). Republican dissidents have been “trying to kill officers for more than a decade”. This is “a blunder” that should never have happened”.
The threat posed by the hack targeting Britain’s elections watchdog is less immediate, said The Guardian. But it, too, is serious. Blamed on a “hostile actor” such as Russia, the breach happened in August 2021, but was only discovered after an “alarming” 14-month delay. Fortunately, most of the data leaked is publicly available and wouldn’t enable hackers to influence an election, said the Daily Mail. But this breach nonetheless shows that “all our democratic institutions must be constantly on their guard”.
The dark days of the Troubles, during which 302 Royal Ulster Constabulary officers were killed, are mercifully behind us, said Kate Devlin in The Independent. But the threat faced by officers of what is now the PSNI remains all too real: three officers have been killed in the 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed; and in February, an attempt was made on the life of a third, Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell, who was critically wounded. PSNI officers are still obliged to check for explosives under their cars, and often keep their occupations a secret from neighbours and even relatives.
Northern Ireland’s terror threat level had already been raised to “severe” before this fiasco, said John Mooney in The Sunday Times – meaning an attack by republican dissidents is “highly likely”. Now that information from the breach has been “shared widely”, the outlook appears worse still. There will be security reviews and office transfers: some officers will have to move house.
It has been clear for a while that the PSNI is no longer “fit for purpose”, said Andrew McQuillan in The Spectator. The force faces a £38m funding gap, its leadership is viewed with suspicion by the rank and file, and public trust in it is low. It won’t be increased by the discovery that the police cannot safely “manage an Excel spreadsheet”.
The Electoral Commission hack could also conceivably have “lethal” consequences, said Edward Lucas in The Times. In that security breach, it seems that foreign spies “ran riot” in its networks for more than a year. “The kneejerk reaction was to blame Russia.” But China may be the more likely culprit. Beijing’s hackers have been “stealing big databases for at least a decade”, and a list of 40 million voters would be very helpful in their efforts to identify British intelligence officers. It could allow them, for example, to search for people who have dropped off the public electoral roll. “Cross-check that with academic records showing who studied Chinese (or Russian or Arabic), and you are well on the way to spotlighting our spooks.”
What’s next?
The PSNI is also investigating a second data breach, in which a spreadsheet naming more than 200 staff was stolen last month. The force could face a “multimillion- pound” class action lawsuit from officers affected by last week’s leak, reports The Mail on Sunday – as well as a substantial fine from the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK data regulator.
Separately, it has emerged that 1,230 people, including witnesses and victims of crime, have had their data leaked by Norfolk and Suffolk police forces. The forces said that the data was erroneously included in Freedom of Information responses, owing to a “technical issue”.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
'The United States needs to up its game'
Instant opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass Published
-
'Accepting defeat is Rishi Sunak's only hope of victory'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By The Week Staff Published
-
Royal family website attacked by Russian hackers
Speed Read Pro-Kremlin group claim responsibility just two weeks after King Charles condemns invasion of Ukraine
By The Week Staff Published
-
Journalists in UK courts: question of transparency?
Under the radar Proposed changes to justice system include excluding reporters from rape and sexual assault trials
By Harriet Marsden Published
-
Met Police clean-up: more than 1,000 officers suspended or on restricted duties
'Eye-watering' figures show scale of challenge to restore public trust
By Harriet Marsden Published
-
The Proud Boys: paying the price for attacking the Capitol
Why Everyone's Talking About A judge sentenced Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the far-right group, to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy
By The Week Staff Published
-
Daniel Khalife escape: how secure are UK prisons?
Today's Big Question MPs and experts blame austerity cuts for chronic understaffing, overcrowding and inexperienced guards
By Harriet Marsden Published
-
Daniel Abed Khalife: how did terror suspect escape from Wandsworth prison?
Today's Big Question ‘Gob-smacking’ events raise urgent questions about state of UK’s criminal justice system
By Julia O'Driscoll Published
-
Lucy Letby’s motivation: a ‘void’ in the harrowing case
feature Like most serial killers, the former nurse has been silent about what drove her to kill multiple babies
By The Week Staff Published
-
Lucy Letby: why wasn’t nurse caught sooner?
Today's Big Question Hospital bosses under fire amid claims multiple warnings and chances to stop serial killer were dismissed
By The Week Staff Published
-
Russia blamed for cyberattack that exposed UK voters’ data
Speed Read Electoral Commission has not formally identified ‘hostile actors’ behind massive breach but experts say Russians ‘top suspect list’
By Richard Windsor Published