A Police App Exposed Secret Details About Raids and Suspects
Last September, law enforcement agents from five counties in Southern California coordinated an operation to investigate, raid, and arrest more than 600 suspected sex offenders. The mission, Operation Protect the Innocent, was one of the largest such raids in years, involving over 64 agencies. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, it was coordinated using a free trial of an app called SweepWizard.
The raid was hailed as a success by Chief Michael Moore of the LAPD at a press conference the following week. But there was a problem: Unbeknownst to police, SweepWizard had been leaking a trove of confidential details about the operation to the open internet.
The data, which the LAPD and partners in the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force uploaded to SweepWizard, included private information about the suspects as well as sensitive details that, in the wrong hands, could tip off suspects as to when they were going to be raided and cast suspicion on people who had not yet been convicted of any crime.
