CrimInt is a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

run by the Metropolitan Police Service of

Greater London Greater London is an administrative area in England, coterminous with the London region, containing most of the continuous urban area of London. It contains 33 local government districts: the 32 London boroughs, which form a Ceremonial count ...

which stores information on

criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...

s, suspected criminals and protesters. It was created in 1994 and supplied by Memex Technology Limited based on their 'Patriarch' technology. It supports the recording and searching of items of intelligence by both police officers and back office staff. As of 2005 it contained seven million information reports and 250,000 intelligence records. People are able to request their information from the database under

data protection Data protection may refer to: * Information privacy, also known as data privacy * Data security {{Authority control ...

laws. Requests have shown that the database holds large amounts of information on protesters who have not committed any crimes which is to be expected as the database is an intelligence database, not a crime recording system. Information is stored for at least seven years. Holding information on people who have never committed any offence may be against people's

human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...

. A police officer, Amerdeep Johal, allegedly used the database to contact

sex offender A sex offender (sexual offender, sex abuser, or sexual abuser) is a person who has committed a Sex and the law, sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and legal jurisdiction. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convi ...

s and threatened to disclose information about them from the database unless they paid him thousands of pounds.

References

Databases in England Government databases in the United Kingdom 1994 establishments in England {{crime-stub

See also

References