[wtjs]

Somebody admiringly cited statistics related to OpSnap Lancs, gleaned from WhatDoTheyKnow, showing what would indeed be an admirable response rate for submissions. LC claims in its FoI response that 2674 submissions were received at OpSnap between 25.10.21 to 30.11.22, and that 1550 of those had resulted in action being taken against the driver. Cor! 58% of submissions, many of which (but none of mine!) would have been crap, resulting in ‘action against the driver’.The War Against the Driver in action in Lancashire!

People should have smelled a rat at an action rate much better than Judge Dredd’s and I knew immediately it was wrong. My first submission to OSL was APL101900 on 22.12.21- my last in the period described by LC was  APL109592 on 29.11.22. I made about 400 submissions over the period- since mid May 2022 the great majority were reporting vehicles on the road without MOT. The number of submissions over the period was therefore considerably greater than 7692, which is about 3 times as many as claimed by LC- those claiming that the submissions are not numbered strictly consecutively, or that there are gaps in the allocated numbers are wrong.

I made submission APL107489 on 23.8.22 just before an absence and restarted with APL108065 on 18.9.22- an absence from the area of 25 days. Without my assistance the population of Lancashire made about 575 submissions- so it’s about 750 a month when I’m around, which is compatible with the 8000-odd I claim above, and not the 250 submissions a month LC claims

LC is undoubtedly lying, in the usual sense that they know that the information provided by the un-named person in response to the FoI request is untrue- they will have some dodge that there was a misunderstanding, the person providing the response did not know anything about OSL etc etc. So you can be pretty sure that LC is lying about the rest of the figures provided in the FoI response. I have shown that the evasive language used in the ‘action letter’ (which they have refused to change) allows them to decide, in the end after consideration etc. etc., to do nothing at all- yet that will still be counted as ‘action being taken’. LC is unlikely to be the only police force trying tricks like this- we recently saw that Sussex had copied Lancashire’s abuse and mis-statement of GDPR regulations to force applicants to agree that they were ‘displaying notification on the mode of transport’, presumably including legs, that they were filming. Watch out for similar deceptions from your own local force!

Topic

[wtjs]

This post is copied from this

This post is copied from this topic

I’m still waiting to hear back from Sussex Police – I’ve done an FOI on this

It won’t do you any good! Sussex is one of the forces following the Lancashire Constabulary dodgy OpSnap model, which involves no prosecutions, lying about what they’ve done and refusing to disclose anything about anything. Cutting a long story short: see the most recent item on here, which is about this offence(link is external). I now have the Information Commissioner’s Decision Notice dated 3.5.23, Ref: IC-225713-W2Y2. Oddly, this is not available on the Information Commissioner website(link is external), despite them being published up to the decision date of 10th May. Maybe they hold back when they think it’s going to the Information Tribunal, which it is.

If you want to find out what the police actually did, when they claim to have taken action, this DN is important, because there will be numerous cases where they did nothing at all or, at best, sent out the joke warning letter for the offender to hang on a nail in the toilet.

This is the top of the DN, verbatim:

1. The complainant has requested information about an incident he reported, from Lancashire Constabulary. Lancashire Constabulary would neither confirm nor deny (“NCND”) holding the requested information, citing section 40(5) (Personal information) of FOIA.
2. The Commissioner’s decision is that Lancashire Constabulary was entitled to rely on section 40(5) of FOIA. No steps are required.

What it means is: when the police tell you they’re ‘taking action’, and you try to find out what the action was, they refuse to tell you, claiming that they can’t even confirm that they have any idea what the police did! It’s even possible, given the institutionalised ineptitude at Lancashire Constabulary that they really don’t know!

[wtjs]

An utterly stupid dodge since

An utterly stupid dodge since vehicle registration is not PII

Although it makes this a bulky post, I will reiterate what I have written before, now including the Lancashire Constabulary Internal Review, soon to be on its way to the Information Commissioner- an organisation itself so paralysed by backlogs that it has had to apply to the Information Tribunal for extra time to deal with many, many appeals. Anyway, that’s another story. The FOIA is knackered at the moment! However, you have to keep going or the b******s always win!

FoI request to LC, resulting from this offence, and the later letter to me from LC claiming they would be ‘taking action’. Soon after, they ceased to respond to any reports on OpSnap Lancs

https://upride.cc/incident/4148vz_travellerschoicecoach_closepass/

FoI request to LC: This FoI request is for the information held about the action actually taken over this offence against the driver of what was then registered as 4148 VZ, using the information above to identify the offence

Naturally, Lancashire Constabulary refused to even admit that they held any information about what action Lancashire Constabulary had taken against the driver who committed this offence.

The Internal Review confirms this: 

Lancashire Constabulary can neither confirm nor deny that it holds any information
relevant to this request as the duty in Section1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemption:
 Section 40(5) Personal Information

Your Internal Review has now been considered and I can confirm that the information you are seeking cannot be provided at this time. Having reviewed the exemptions applied I agree that the use of s.40 has been applied correctly. I deem that “information held about the action actually taken over this offence against the driver” is classed as third party information and as such is not accessible to yourself via the FOI process. If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision

Anna Cawley 11044
Information Compliance & Data Protection Advisor
Lancashire Constabulary Data Protection Office

You may think this is not relevant to you, but if one bent force gets away with it, it will become the routine response from all the rest of them, from the Ultra-Bent Met emanating outwards. It will end up at the Information Tribunal, because the Commissioner sees it as his role to aid public bodies in evading the intent of the FOIA.

 

[lonpfrb]

Secret_squirrel wrote:

Secret_squirrel wrote:

That reply is utter bullshit.  There is no exemption under the FOIA for confirming or denying something exists coz it might breach PII comms.  The mere fact that confirming something happened does not breach any GDPR legislation anywhere in the world that I am aware of – and I do GDPR as my day job.

A complete an utter dodge.

An utterly stupid dodge since vehicle registration is not PII. Only the police themselves will have PII of the Registered Keeper once DVLA provide it in response to their enquiry.
The witness never has PII as a result of recording a video.

[wtjs]

So if there’s a car accident,

So if there’s a car accident, and I have dash cam footage showing it happening, and the police ask for any available evidence to be presented, they can’t have it because I didn’t have a sticker on my car saying I’m recording video? 

Not quite. You can send it to them, but they will only accept the report if you agree that your bike, car or legs did display such a notification. They can then later invalidate your report unless you can prove you were actually displaying the notification- I have not yet seen any such notification and I insert in my reports a statement that I wasn’t! 

[wtjs]

Where is a cyclist meant to

Where is a cyclist meant to display such a notice to say they are recording?!?!?  Would a GOPRO sticker on your helmet suffice? Crazy.

Clearly you have no experience of Lancashire Constabulary! You’re supposed to display ‘notification that you’re recording’ on your legs if you’re walking or standing! In fact, these are just police dodges so they can claim that people who report offences were lying when agreeing to the statement forced on them by Lancashire Constabulary that they were displaying ‘notifications’. I have still never seen such a notification on a vehicle or cycle around here. I repeat yet again: what would be the consequence if this was a truthful interpretation of GDPR which is touted by LC? Lawyers claiming that they couldn’t see the notification as they zoomed past at 50mph, so therefore the video was inadmissible?! It’s very difficult to conceive of much which is stupider than this

[Spangly Shiny]

Try this. https://passpixi

Try this. https://passpixi.com/
I bought the pocket version and it is surprisingly effective. Of course it won’t deter the real psychopaths out there but at least it puts everyone on notice that you’re recording.

[andy753]

I think there’s another

I think there’s another interesting development here too. What about the many cyclists in London who wear helmet cams in London to help protect them in the event of an accident?  Where is a cyclist meant to display such a notice to say they are recording?!?!?  Would a GOPRO sticker on your helmet suffice? Crazy.

[Bungle_52]

I’ve never noticed any

I’ve never noticed any mention of GDPR when reporting and it’s never been mentioned. May be I should be thankful for that at least.

Under the old system I filled in an online form leaving the video url section blank and then they got back to me asking for the footage. I then emailed a short clip (<24mb) and they replied usually with NFA but occasioanlly a NIP or warning letter. I adopted this approach of not putting the video online so I always knew that they had viewed the footage which I wasn’t convinced of when I uploaded the video to dropbox which used to be their preferred option. It seemed to work well as the PC only had to look through a short clip which presumably saved them time and I got immediate feedback. To me the new system is a retrograde step.

Under OPsnap you fill in a form and upload the footage, 2 mins before and after as you say. The file sizes are around 500mb and it takes ages with a slow upload speed. Initially the  intro confirmation email* said they WOULD get back to to me within 14 days. Predictably they didn’t for my first one so I got in touch and was informed that the 14 days was a mistake and that they would not be giving any feedback as a matter of course. They did tell me they had sent a warning letter for my first one though and implored me to carry on reporting. I haven’t followed up the other 3 reports I submitted yet but I will do at some point to see if they will give feedback on an adhoc basis.

Out of interest, the last report I did under the old system was in November last year. I had no more problems until the last week of January when I had 4 incidents in the space of 10 days. Not sure what was going on but I’ve had no issues since.

Anyway, keep up the good work and best of luck with it.

* edited to correct an error.

[Famous Seamus]

So if there’s a car accident,

So if there’s a car accident, and I have dash cam footage showing it happening, and the police ask for any available evidence to be presented, they can’t have it because I didn’t have a sticker on my car saying I’m recording video? 

[wtjs]

Great stuff! May be useful…
Great stuff! May be useful…

[chrisonabike]

Cartoon on a parallel topic

Cartoon on a parallel topic but equally applicable – in case you hadn’t seen it.

[wtjs]

Gloucestershire have recently

Gloucestershire have recently changed to OPsnap from their old system

This is more important than it seems! We now know that Sussex copied Lancashire with the GDPR dodge that you have to accept, or your submission will be rejected:

I confirm that I understand that dashcam footage falls under the Category of CCTV and as the footage is taken in the public domain, the Domestic Purposes Exemption under the Data Protection Act/UKGDPR does not apply and therefore all users are Data Controllers in their own right. As such you should be informing the public that they are being filmed and should have some form of notification on your mode of transport as you have responsibilities under the Data Protection Act /UKGDPR

I have just looked at OpSnap Gloucs and they don’t seem to have adopted that dodge, but have the 2 minutes before and after dodge. Have you come across the GDPR dodge with Gloucestershire?

[Bungle_52]

I’m afraid I have no

I’m afraid I have no suggestions but I’d just like to record my admiration for your tenacity and wish you the best of luck in your endeavours. I really think it’s time road.cc or cyclingUK got involved in this.

Gloucestershire have recently changed to OPsnap from their old system. I have been informed that they will no longer be providing information on submissions as a matter of course although I was told that my first OPsnap submission had been dealt with by sending a warning letter. The feedback was the best aspect of the old system.

[wtjs]

All this has already been
All this has already been done, to no avail so far! This latest FoI will end up with ICO, but the police know that it all takes months and years!

[JustTryingToGetFromAtoB]

wtjs wrote:

wtjs wrote:

So I’m still working on this. Simultaneously I sent in a FoI request about the actual outcome of this offence of 21.2.22

https://upride.cc/incident/4148vz_travellerschoicecoach_closepass/

This was before Lancashire Constabulary ceased responding to any submissions to OpSnap Lancs- they sent the standard ‘we’re going to do something but we won’t tell you what it is’ reply. LC failed to comply with the FOIA in the specified time, but today I received the reply from LC’s Data Protection Office:

Lancashire Constabulary can neither confirm nor deny that it holds any information relevant to this request as the duty in Section1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemption:
 Section 40(5) Personal Information
To confirm or deny whether we hold any information would in itself reveal the personal data of the subject(s). It is important to note that disclosures under the FOIA are considered as disclosures “to the world” and as such, to confirm or deny whether or not any information is held would be unfair on the data subject(s).

This is nonsense, of course. I have the advantage that I already know how inept and idle LC is, so I am not impressed by this pseudo-legalistic twaddle. I have embarked on the long ‘internal review’ followed by a complaint to the Information Commissioner procedure which LC is relying upon to deter people who want to know what happened to drivers who offended against them. I already know what happened: nothing.

This should serve as an example to those of you have received ‘action letters’- they are often not what they seem.

I really think this should go to the police commissioner or equivalent for where you are and the information commissioner. There does appear to be something rotten in the state of lancs police.

Edit: and your MP. Any decent constituency office will in the first instance send a letter saying I’ve received this, what say you.

Now, they may double down but but sending clap trap about the law to a politician when you’re already under political heat is a bold move.

[Author]

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