By Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice reporter of
A police employee has pleaded guilty to dishonestly accessing a computer system after using the national intelligence software to search for information on people harassing her friend. Photo: 123rf
When her friend was being harassed by nearby residents, a police employee used the national intelligence software to search for the culprits and took photos of their files.
Shortly after, the highly classified information was posted to Facebook.
Kayla Watson was the acting manager for the crime reporting line when she accessed the police National Intelligence Application (NIA) for her personal sleuthing earlier this year.
The 28-year-old has since been charged with dishonestly accessing a computer system, to which she has pleaded guilty. New Zealand Police has confirmed she is still employed by the agency but under restrictive duties.
The NIA is a secure police record system used to store information about millions of New Zealanders. It includes flags for firearms licence holders, people known by police to be HIV (Aids) positive, and alerts for paedophiles and convicted murderers.
Access to it requires a security clearance and its use is audited to ensure employees are not misusing it.
When new employees are given access, they are warned they can only use it for work purposes and must have a reason for everything they search within the system.
Watson, who was based in Auckland at the time of the offending, did not have such a reason when she accessed the NIA.
According to a police summary of facts submitted to the Manukau District Court and released to NZME today, a friend of Watson's was having issues in her Massey neighbourhood.
Letterboxes and vehicles were being damaged and residents on the street were being harassed by people from within the area.
The woman reached out to Watson in a message on 22 April this year, filling her in on what had been happening.
"Dodge house was in our carpark attaching (sic) cars, breaking our letterboxes and fighting again last night," she said.
Watson responded with: "What's the address, I'll have a look?"
She then logged into NIA and searched the address her friend had supplied.
Alerts within the system can be placed on addresses and occupants of that same address can be linked to it.
Watson clicked on four people associated with the address and then took photos on her phone of their files, which included the last three months of police jobs at the address.
"There is aaaalloooot (sic) against their address," Watson said in a follow-up message to her friend.
"Family violence, disorder, drug searches ... the list goes on."
She then sent the photographs she'd taken of the NIA files to her friend via Facebook Messenger. Shortly after, the friend posted the images to a Facebook chat group containing 10 other people.
At least five of them had viewed it before police became aware. The photos were subsequently removed from the group.
In relation to the offending, Watson appeared in the Manukau District Court late last month. She will be sentenced in February.
Since the NIA was introduced in 2001, there have been several instances of police misusing the system, including one sworn police officer who gave information to gangs. Another used it to access information about his Tinder matches.
According to data released to NZME under the Official Information Act, there have been four breaches of the NIA that have resulted in criminal charges in the last five years - two of which were by uniformed staff and the others by civilians, with Watson being one of those people.
There are still 20 ongoing investigations into misuses of the NIA, with 13 of those involving sworn constabulary members.
In a response to questions regarding Watson's case, police said they were unable to comment while it was still before the court.
*This story was first published by the New Zealand Herald.