CISOCA station diaries back in police custody
As Police Commish apologises for data foul-up, Information Commissioner blasted over silence on breaches
Published:Monday | February 3, 2025 | 4:36 PMErica Virtue/Senior Gleaner Writer
Two days after he apologised for an embarrassing data-protection breach in which station diaries containing information related to cases investigated by the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) were exposed, Police Commissioner Dr Kevin Blake confirmed yesterday that the diaries are now back in the custody of the police.
“They were retrieved on the day it was brought to my attention. January 15,” the police chief said in response to a query from The Gleaner.
The retrieval occurred the same day The Gleaner contacted CISOCA for comment after coming across the station diaries inside the centre’s abandoned former headquarters on Ruthven Road in St Andrew. An article revealing the blunder was published in the newspaper the next day.
CISOCA’s offices were situated at the building at 2A Ruthven Road for more than two decades before, in 2024, its headquarters were relocated to a new facility at Upper Lady Musgrave Road.
In a publication on the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) website on Friday, under the headline ‘Accountability and Transparency – Commissioner Addresses CISOCA Records Incident Head-On’, Blake described the incident as gross negligence and accepted responsibility on behalf of the police force.
“This, colleagues, cannot be described as anything less than gross negligence on our part as an organisation, especially at a time like now when our transformation is at such an advanced stage and moving at such a rapid pace,” the commissioner said.
In his comments, he indicated that during the transition, some records that could not be accommodated at the new location were securely locked away in a temporary storage facility, which was later vandalised.
Acknowledging the organisational oversight that allowed such an incident to occur, Blake said: “For that, as the person with command responsibility over the JCF, I apologise not only to the clients of CISOCA but also to Jamaica.”
Tip of the iceberg
For attorney-at-law Chuck Cameron, who has more than 20 years as a practising attorney and who, since 2019, has had advanced master class training as a data- protection officer, the CISOCA breach was the tip of the iceberg.
Cameron believes that there are widespread risks of breaches to the privacy of the data of Jamaicans across 95 per cent of the public and private sectors, and the silence of the information commissioner on such a matter of grave concern was deafening.
Cameron, who spoke with The Gleaner yesterday on the state of data protection in the island, said the response from the police commissioner was “exemplary”.
He commended the JCF for admitting the error and apologising, which, according to him, respected the rights of those affected.
“But as we acknowledge the JCF’s exemplary response, the silence of the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) on this matter is deafening. This was an opportunity for the OIC to demonstrate leadership, educate the public, and reinforce its mandate under the Data Protection Act. Instead, the absence of any response has left a void in what should have been a pivotal moment for advocacy,” he wrote in response to Blake’s response.
Governance ‘non-negotiable’
Commenting on the breach, Cameron said it “was a glaring reminder of why robust data governance is non-negotiable”.
Such incidents, he said, test the integrity of organisations and the leadership within them.
He said the Ruthven Road revelation called for “visible, decisive action from the very body tasked with safeguarding our data privacy rights – and that call went unanswered”.
“I think the shock should really lead to awareness because that’s the state of play for 95 per cent of all government agencies and private entities. So it’s nothing peculiar to the police,” Cameron told The Gleaner yesterday, painting a dismal picture of the state of data protection despite the island’s robust law.
According to him, “This office has the most far-reaching powers in the country, more far-reaching than any other head of JDF (Jamaica Defence Force), police commissioner, DPP (director of public prosecutions). When those powers are activated, I think the public needs to know about it.”
When contacted yesterday for comment, Information Commissioner Celia Barclay’s phone number generated an automatic response indicating her office was “unavailable right now but will respond to you as soon as possible”.