West Midlands Police seem to take privacy very seriously. So when three men in their 20s were arrested on suspicion of stealing sheep, the police added pixels to the victims' faces – yes, the lambs – to display in their press release.
According to the statement, the Romanians stuffed the lambs into a car in Yardley, West Midlands, and police managed to arrest them.
BBC News commented:
“Sources say the officer blurred the image as a joke. He apparently concluded that he had an obligation under the European sheep rights convention to hide the faces of the lambs.”
And a more serious note
West Midlands Police acted entirely within guidelines which explicitly state that they should not give out information relating to victims of crime. Under legislation including the Data Protection Act and section 8 of the Human Rights Act, police must protect any personal information unless there is a very serious reason.
But it's not just the police who have to protect personal information. Journalists, for example, are subject to the same law.
Agreed, the police action was excessive.
In a recent example, however, the Huffington Post reported that David Dinsmore, Chief Operating Officer of News UK, had been convicted of publishing information that identified the victim of sexual assault.
One of the group's newspapers had published a photograph of the victim of former England footballer Adam Johnson. The court ruled that it did not go far enough in concealing the victim's identity.
A lot can happen from the mistake of a newspaper that does not sufficiently conceal the identity of the victim. Somewhere here we should also mention the dangers of social media, where the public tries to guess the victim, collecting evidence.
In today's online world where information lives forever, there is no room for error in privacy protection.
