29 January 2020

Request:

Bitcoin Crimes

I would like to know the following under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) please.

1. Total number of crimes relating to Bitcoin (the cryptocurrency) recorded by your force over the last two calendar years (2018 and 2019) broken down by year.

2. If possible, please could you also provide the free text/police notes accompanying the crime so I have the details of the incident.

Response:

1. All Crimes have been searched with a matches pattern search filter on the MO free text to match the wording 'BITCOIN' within the years stated above, as requested. 2018 - 20 2019 - 4

2. Please see the following pages. Any further information is exempt under Section 40(2) Personal Information. See explanation below.

As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches within the Crime MO. This does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used. Also, we cannot search the crime investigation screens/additional information screens, if the terms are not used within the MO, then the crime will not be identified.

Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Northamptonshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt within the provisions of the Act) to provide you, the applicant, with a Notice which:

a) states the fact that an exemption has been applied b) specifies the exemption in question, and c) states why the exemption applies

Section 40(2) - Personal Information

This is an absolute and class based exemption; the right given under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request official information held by public authorities, does not apply to personal data or personal data of third parties. In this case to release this personal information would not constitute fair processing of the data. As this exemption is class based, I am not required to identify the harm in disclosure and in this instance I believe the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in any release.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that the data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.