A police officer hacks into his female colleagues' phones, and a lawyer criticizes the police for deleting evidence for this reason.
A former IT employee of the East Jutland police is sitting in the dock accused of abusing his position to hack into up to 150 of his colleagues' phones, doing so to obtain inappropriate content such as private messages, photos and videos, taken mainly from the phones of his female colleagues.
But during the suspect's interrogation in March 2021, large portions of photos and messages belonging to his colleagues were deleted by the police officers present, and as a result, much of the evidence in the case disappeared.
The controversial decision, made at the Aarhus police station in March of last year, could today have serious consequences for a large number of female employees, who are considered victims of a sensational trial currently taking place in the local court in Aarhus.
According to Miriam Michelsen, a digital violations specialist at NJORD LAWFIRM, this can have serious consequences for the affected individuals. She explained that it is a major problem that evidence was deleted before the case was presented to the court, as this resulted in the victims having no opportunity to identify what the defendant stole from them.
A former employee in the police IT department was accused of accessing the phones of more than one hundred of his colleagues in order to access defamatory material. He had several thousand private photos of his female colleagues mainly. In addition, he is also accused of illegally obtaining materials from criminal proceedings.
The accused pleaded partially guilty.
According to the lawyer, victims of digital violations live under the constant threat that their material may appear on websites in different places, and in this case they do not even know what they might be surprised to find shared online.
The lawyer added that if, for example, a thief were caught and it turned out he had stored a large number of stolen brooms, they would never accept burning the stolen brooms before a criminal trial. However, in this case, the evidence related to the police interrogation of the accused had been deleted, as an agreement had been reached between the investigators and the defendant.
However, if the man agrees to open a hard drive encrypted with special material, it can be deleted immediately afterwards.
The accused admitted that he had hacked or attempted to hack the phones of 150 of his colleagues over many years, and he did this by making his colleagues believe that he was conducting some tests and therefore had to use some of their personal phones as an IT employee.
Meanwhile, lawyer Miriam Michelsen is concerned about the position of the affected parties regarding the awarding of compensation, as it may be difficult for the court to determine compensation for the harm suffered when there is no evidence in the criminal case of the type of materials in his possession. She adds that the danger lies in not awarding the affected parties compensation because the materials were deleted before the criminal proceedings, which may cause some loss of confidence in the legal system.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission conducted an investigation into this operation, and in this regard it was not possible to know who in the police bore administrative responsibility for this agreement.
An investigator from the East Jutland police explained in court that the decision to reach an agreement with the defendant came after the defendant initially refused to grant access to the encrypted hard drive. The investigator then raised the possibility of deleting the material after the police had gained a general overview of it. According to Ritsaou, the defendant subsequently agreed to unlock the hard drive, as explained in court.
According to DR, East Jutland police declined to comment on the lawyer's criticism, and a verdict in the case is expected on February 20.
