Police ‘seek expanded information’

Press, 27 May 1981, Page 2

Police ‘seek expanded information’

PA Wellington The police would like to keep more extensive information on the Wanganui lawenforcement computer than the law allows, according to the public’s watchdog on the computer. The Wanganui Computer Centre Privacy Commis.sioner, Sir James Wicks, said that the police wanted danger flags put in the computer for information that they habitually recorded manually, such as a person's psychiatric record, whether a person carried a knife, and so on.

"I think they regret, the loss of quick access to .other information that they used to record.” he told the annual meeting of- the Council for Civil Liberties at Wellington. Sir James said that the

categories of information now kept in the computer were those prescribed in the act regulating the centre. Some of the computer's 23 sub-systems were already strictly for police use, giving details of the modus operand! of a criminal, names of wanted persons, and names of missing persons.

■ One of Sir James’s functions .is to provide citizens with print-outs of their own records in the computer. Information from 17 of the subsystems can be disclosed.

Sir James said that when the act was revised last year, he had been consulted about most of the clauses in the bill, “but in the case of clause eight, I did not see it until it was before the House, and at that stage I went hopping and wrote to the. Minister.”. The clause would have al-, lowed any of the three departments using the computer — police, justice, and transport — to extract information and pass it to other departments. Through Sir James’s representations, such disclosures will have to be within certain guidelines.

Sir James said that of the print-outs his office supplied to citizens who asked for them, roughly half only gave details of having a driver’s licence and owning a car, a quarter of the names had nothing recorded against them, and a quarter had a mixed record of traffic and criminal offences.