The Guardian view on Northern Ireland’s data leak: putting lives at risk
A new documentary film recounts a grim story from the Northern Ireland Troubles. Half a century ago, Thomas Niedermayer was a German businessman living in Belfast. At Christmas in 1973, he was kidnapped from his home by the IRA, possibly to be traded for imprisoned bombers, and murdered. His body was found in a shallow grave in 1980. Ten years on, his widow, Ingeborg, took her own life. A year after that, the Niedermayers’ younger daughter, Renate, killed herself. Another two years later, their elder daughter, Gabriella, did the same.
The Niedermayer murder, as detailed in the Face Down documentary, was vicious. For the family, the damage lasted for generations, creating new victims and further tragedies. The lesson is frighteningly timely. This week, the Police Service of Northern Ireland mistakenly published an online spreadsheet detailing the surnames, initials, ranks or grades, locations and departments of all current PSNI officers and civilian staff members. The spreadsheet was not taken down for three hours. Approximately 10,000 people were listed. The consequences could endure for decades.
The leak was apparently caused by human error, not hacking. Either way, it is a catastrophic blow to the reputation and security standards of the PSNI. The breach is hard to forgive. Few in Northern Ireland have a more absolute requirement to maintain data security than the police. The damage is made worse, if that is possible, by the separate revelation that documents and a police laptop containing further sensitive staff lists were stolen in Newtownabbey on 6 July (and not reported for three weeks).
The human damage is to the service’s officers and staff – and their families. If the spreadsheet was copied or downloaded – and dissident republicans claim to have acquired it – lives are unquestionably at risk. The disruption to work and home that must inevitably follow an incident of this gravity will, at the very least, set back the tasks of police for a long time to come.
But lives matter most. Dissident groups are ready to kill to advance what they call the armed struggle. Police, their families and staff are consi
dered prime targets; more than 300 were killed during the Troubles. The attempted murder of DCI John Caldwell in Omagh in February – shot repeatedly in front of his son and other children – is the clearest possible proof that these are real and present dangers.
Police data security protocols must be thoroughly reviewed and tightened. In the long term, though, the best and safest way to frustrate the terrorists is to make Northern Ireland’s democratic politics work. Yet it is 18 months since the devolved power-sharing institutions were shut down by the Democratic Unionist party over the Brexit border protocol. There are few reliable signs of progress. As the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said this week, the danger of drift is real. The PSNI leak hugely increases the need for power-sharing to be re-established as a priority.
At just this moment, though, cabinet ministers seem more focused on creating rightwing headlines than governing. Those who want the UK to abandon the European convention on human rights should remember that the convention is absolutely integral to the Good Friday agreement. Withdrawal could destroy power-sharing and the peace process, causing Britain reputational damage on a Brexit scale. In spite of this week’s leak, it would be hard to think of anything that would make the job of Northern Ireland’s police more dangerous.
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