Dissent from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has targeted the prominent veteran of the already disarmed organization, Gerry Kellyin his first public performance since the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) admitted to the public leak of personal data of all its operators. The identity, rank and job location of the PSNI’s 10,000 officers and civilian employees were posted online this month in apparent internal human error.
The head of the force, Simon Byrne, said he was “convinced” that radicals from the so-called New IRA or another small group opposed to the peace process they have accessed the police file. The file was visible to any user for at least three hours before being removed from the web. The list was uploaded to the digital platform in response to a query from the Freedom of Information law.
It was a serious breach in the protection of confidential data that does not concern only the volatile territory of Northern Ireland. This Tuesday, the Police of Norfolk and Suffolk, in the east of England, revealed that has released personal information of 1,230 people, including victims and witnesses of crimes. In this case, the force attributes the potential crime to a “technical issue” while the PSNI admitted “human error.”
In Belfast, a version of the police force list, with the last names of the agents deleted, appeared attached to a wall outside Sinn Fein headquarters on Falls Road, the artery of the historic nationalist neighborhood. A photograph of Kelly, a former IRA prisoner and member of the now dissolved Autonomous Assembly, had been inserted on the list, with an explicit message: “Gerry, we know who your colleagues are.”
“It’s an obvious attempt by dissident Republicans to intimidate me. More sinister still, it’s a very public sign that dissidents have access to confidential information of the leaked document. It poses a very real threat to the officers and civilian personnel affected,” said Kelly, Sinn Fein’s spokesperson for police and security affairs.