Comment Re:Legalities - should be confidential (Score 1) 301
The work the police is doing does not automatically enter public domain, there is supposed to be clearence levels involved. Unrestricted, restricted and Confidential is the highest level. (Secret and Top secret only apply to army). When the police is to deal with special cases such as robbery, violence, etc, it is supposed to be a confidential case in mostly all cases.
Now the police face freedom of information requests, and the article is talking about the cost of evaluating what can be and cannot be relased - it is too expensive to go through and evaluate all the material, and they face a request to release ALL footage!
The most obvious policy should of course be
1) blanket requests cannot be made - all freedom request should be specific and for a purpose for the freedom request to be evaluated
2) the release should take into account who file the request. It is very different if a person unrelated with a case request the footage or if the person in the footage/his lawyer request the information. Confidential information may be given to the later two, whereas others only should get confidential information under specific conditions and all groups should likely sign confidentiality agreements if confidential infrormation is handed out. If the information is not viewed as confidential however, the information rules apply accordingly.
In other words, the way it is supposed to work we should track down and arrest someone who disclose confidential information obtained under a freedom of information request.