One of the boxes contained the personal details of up to 10,000 Trade Me customers, including their name, user name, personal email address, phone numbers, home address and trading history over the past five years.WTF? Well, former cop and TradeMe security manager Dean Winter blames the law.
Oh rubbish, as I pointed out in an earlier post and is confirmed in the article, disclosure of evidence must be shared between prosecution and defence for the sake of open justice. This invasion of privacy is solely the police's responsibility. What drove them to use their search warrant to trawl so much information from the system?Winter said it was disappointing the information had been passed on by police to the accused.
"I think lawyers should take more responsibility for the information they receive under disclosure in some circumstances," the former detective said. They need to take responsibility for its security. Handing it on to the accused is a bit silly in some cases."
Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe, of the police Special Investigation Group, refused to comment on what information had been requested from Trade Me and why. He also refused to comment on why so many traders' details had been requested, thousands of whom are unconnected to the Urewera case, rather than only those specific to the investigation.
It seems that Ruatoki residents weren't the only innocents raided by overenthusiastic cops looking for terrorists. Unlike the Ruatokians, you may not even know that your privacy was raped by the cops.
