Dallas cops lost 8TB of criminal case data during bungled migration

guest · Aug 16, 2021

Dallas cops lost 8TB of criminal case data during bungled migration
...says the DA... four months later
August 16, 2021
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/16/dallas_data_migration_8tb_deletion/

A bungled data migration of a network drive caused the deletion of 22 terabytes of information from a US police force's systems – including case files in a murder trial, according to local reports.

Dallas Police Department confessed to the information blunder last week, revealing in a statement that a data migration exercise carried out at the end of the 2020-21 financial year deleted vast amounts of data from a network drive.

"On August 6, 2021, the Dallas Police Department (DPD) and City of Dallas Information and Technology Services Department (ITS) informed the administration of this Office that in April 2021, the City discovered that multiple terabytes of DPD data had been deleted during a data migration of a DPD network drive," said a statement [PDF] from the Dallas County prosecutor's office.
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The migration, which took place between 31 March and 5 April, actually destroyed 22TB of data. 14TB were recovered, presumably from backups, but "approximately 8 Terabytes remain missing and are believed to be unrecoverable."
It added:

Effective today, all prosecutors have been instructed to verify with the filing detective that all evidence/files were shared with our office via TechShare before disposing of the case
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Such blunders aren't unique to Dallas. Earlier this year Britain's Home Office managed to lose 400,000 criminal evidence records from a Fujitsu-provided mainframe backup appliance.
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guest · Oct 2, 2021

City of Dallas calls IT protocols 'inadequate' in 131-page report on police data loss
The city report said the data consisted of "archived images, video, audio, case notes, and other items collected by the Dallas Police Department."
October 1, 2021
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/l...cols/287-51d0d762-3b24-4510-b571-77b5d7537cd3

Dallas' city information technology department sent a 131-page report to city council on Thursday, detailing the massive data loss involving police records earlier this year and attributing the issue to "inadequate" protocols among IT staff.

The report confirmed that 22 terabytes of data, involving more than 8 million records, were deleted in the loss, which happened in March.
About 14 terabytes were recovered, but the rest was permanently lost.
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Broadnax in August said the IT employee responsible for the data loss did not follow proper protocols and that the department should have had more safeguards in place to prevent such a loss.

The report released this week said the IT department "must implement and appropriately operate adequate management controls systems including asset and inventory management systems."
The report also recommended better backup policies, such as keeping more copies of data and storing those copies on different devices.
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guest · Nov 9, 2021

Activists leak 600 hours of mostly Dallas police helicopter footage after city’s 22 terabyte loss of criminal case data
The leaked video shows the surveillance of people in their front yards
November 7, 2021
https://www.courthousenews.com/acti...citys-22-terabyte-loss-of-criminal-case-data/

Data transparency activists released a massive 600-hour leak of mostly Dallas Police Department helicopter footage, raising more questions about the city’s data security protocols three months after DPD admitted to a 22-terabyte deletion of case data that resulted in the release of criminal defendants awaiting trial.

Distributed Denial of Secrets — a WikiLeaks-like group known as DDoSecrets — posted over 1.8 terabytes of police helicopter footage on the group’s website late Friday. The majority of the footage appears to be from DPD and the rest from the Georgia State Patrol. Large sections of the video shows random surveillance of Dallas neighborhoods, with highly detailed and zoomed-in images of people in their front yards, standing by their cars and sunbathing. The subjects appear to have no indication they are under surveillance.
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Federal courts have traditionally held that journalists cannot be criminally prosecuted for publishing stolen or hacked material as long as the journalist is not involved in the theft. However, the stealing of computer data through hacking remains a federal crime.

Emma Best, a journalist and co-founder of DDoSecrets, said the group is unaware of the identity of the leak source and that the video was stored by the two agencies on unsecured cloud infrastructure.

“In some of the videos, they use infrared tech to look at people inside buildings with thinner walls,” she tweeted. “The video provides no justifying context.”
The leak comes three months after Dallas County prosecutors admitted that DPD lost 22 terabytes of case data during a data migration in the spring, with only 14 terabytes being recoverable.
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DDoSecrets first made headlines in June 2020 when it leaked over two decades-worth of internal data from over 200 law enforcement agencies. Known as BlueLeaks, the 269 gigabytes includes email message, audio and video files and police and FBI intelligence reports dating back to 1996.
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more about DDoSecrets:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thr...-amount-of-data-from-around-the-world.414795/

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Dallas cops lost 8TB of criminal case data during bungled migration

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