The secret policeman's balls!'

‘Regulation these days should contain any abuse. It's a far cry from the days when the Isle of Man Constabulary were so zany they were bugging themselves’

So was it a simple innocuous Freedom of Information request or a more sinister attempt to see how easily the cops track telecom communications?

IOM Today have a story about missing persons statistics and mixed in it they enquire about costs for accessing telecom data;

The police rather disengiously say:

‘The Constabulary replied that it ’neither confirms nor denies’ that it would use data from telecommunications service providers as this may ’reveal police tactics and capabilities’.

Link:

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=43125&headline=Police%20reveal%...

It really is a bit of unnecessary obfuscation as in this day and age it's common knowledge the police access when necessary communications and in any case who is going to quibble over it if it results in vulnerable or distressed people being found or family reassured that a loved one who has gone adrift is alright.

Obviously the police can’t be totally open about everything but an evasion of this sort seems unnecessary. Let's face it the cops were tapping phones and metering with the assistance of the old ‘Post Office Telephones’ decades ago before it was even legal. The Post Office had dedicated contacts for police to that end.

As long ago as 1984 the Secretary of the Home Affairs Board, David
Creer, (later Chief Executive of the Department of Home Affairs) when responding to a query from the Celtic League which had raised concerns about the practice of illegal telephone tapping and metering being carried out by the authorities said:

"if in exceptional circumstances it was necessary for a private telephone
call to be tapped or monitored by the Isle of Man constabulary, my
board would expect it to be carried out in accordance with the strict
regulations in force in the United Kingdom"

Creer was accepting that there was no statutory powers at that time in the Isle of Man. However we already knew this as we had a copy of a ‘ORDER’ issued by then Manx Chief Constable Frank Weedon which mirrored UK Home Office guidelines. The original of that ‘ORDER’ is in the Manx Museum Library with our other CL papers if the cops haven’t nicked it back!

(ORDER: USE OF EQUIPMENT IN POLICE SURVEILLANCE OPERATIONS – Issued by Chief Constable Frank Weedon – 9th September 1981)

Let's be clear every cloud has a silver lining and you probably wouldn’t enjoy the fast smooth communications you do today if police forces and the intelligence services globally had not needed a faster and more efficient method than going down to the exchange and crossing some wires or sticking a meter on.

Thankfully regulation these days should contain any abuse. It's a far cry from the days when the Isle of Man Constabulary were so zany they were bugging themselves - I HOPE!

Image: Isle of Man Constabulary 1984 - stock photo?

Bernard Moffatt