I’ve only worked with a handful of LEOs in my time there, but the ones I did work with were genuinely concerned about it.
If you’ve never worked with a government agency before, let me tell you, Hanlon’s Razor is in full effect. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The higher ups know that free reign for their officers to look up anything is a recipe for legal nightmares. The individual officers are often just too dumb to realize that they shouldn’t search for something, and do so out of curiosity. Having blocks in the way like requiring a case number be entered to run a search, and knowing that that search and results are forever associated to that case, cut down a lot on abuse.
Are all forms of abuse the same, or so easily mitigated? No, but I’d like for some system to audit that and at least try to enforce it.
If you’ve never worked with a government agency before, let me tell you, Hanlon’s Razor is in full effect. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The higher ups know that free reign for their officers to look up anything is a recipe for legal nightmares. The individual officers are often just too dumb to realize that they shouldn’t search for something, and do so out of curiosity. Having blocks in the way like requiring a case number be entered to run a search, and knowing that that search and results are forever associated to that case, cut down a lot on abuse.
Are all forms of abuse the same, or so easily mitigated? No, but I’d like for some system to audit that and at least try to enforce it.