Dissident republicans allegedly possess leaked PSNI data
Chief constable has rejected calls for his resignation
Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) chief constable Simon Byrne has said that "dissident republicans" claim to possess information exposed in a recent data breach, which could be used to target people working for the organisation.
Byrne addressed the media on Thursday, following inquiries during a meeting of the Northern Ireland Policing Board. Senior officers from PSNI were also present.
He said he regretted the "industrial scale breach of data," and that the police force was providing guidance to its officers and personnel regarding possible threats and risks.
"We are now aware that dissident republicans claim to be in possession of some of this information circulating on WhatsApp," Byrne said.
PSNI's priority now is maintaining vigilance for the safety and well-being of both officers and staff as the force grapples with the fallout of the incident.
"We quickly established a critical incident command structure...so that we can work flat out to get answers to the questions that are on everybody's lips both within the organisations and beyond that," Byrne said.
"An early worst case scenario that we have been dealing with is that third parties would attempt to get this data to intimidate, corrupt or indeed cause harm to our officers and staff."
The chief constable clarified that no police officers have been relocated from their residences, and that a dedicated group tasked with addressing immediate concerns related to threats and risks in real-time has been established.
On Tuesday, the PSNI disclosed a data breach that was a result of human error. The breach exposed sensitive details about all existing officers and staff members online for several hours.
The details were mistakenly published in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request and included the last names, initials, ranks or positions, work locations and departments of all PSNI personnel.
The original FoI request had asked for a breakdown of PSNI staff ranks and grades. In addition to providing a table outlining the count of individuals in roles like constable, the PSNI accidentally included a spreadsheet holding personal data on over 10,000 individuals.
The Police Federation of Northern Ireland, an organisation advocating for officers' interests, described the occurrence as a "monumental" breach.
Byrne said on Thursday that hundreds of officers have voiced concerns about their safety.
He dismissed proposals, including one from Sammy Wilson, a Democratic Unionist Party MP, suggesting his resignation.
"Leadership is not about walking away - it's facing up to responsibility. We need consistency and calm heads to lead us through an unprecedented crisis," he said.
The meeting also discussed a second separate breach that followed the theft of a police-issued laptop, radio and documents. These included a spreadsheet containing the identities of over 200 officers and staff.
The items were stolen from a vehicle in Newtownabbey in July, and remain unrecovered.
"We haven't recovered the stolen property, I know there is speculation about how and why it may have been stolen but we're in now an investigation which is in its early stages, and we can't confirm much else," Byrne said.
He clarified that PSNI possess the ability to remotely erase data from devices, and laptops are safeguarded with password protection.
"So we're quite confident that any information on those devices will not be accessible by a third party."