U English. Wat informazion ar u holding?

Members of the Scorpions - not Cambridgeshire police. This was the alternate cover. I find this one pretty offensive and upsetting.

Cambridgeshire Police force is being forced to disclose what information they hold in relation to a row which developed last year into the censoring of internet.

The dispute centres on a decision by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to blacklist Wikipedia due to concerns over the legality of an image used on the page of German heavy metal band Scorpions.

The image in question was the album cover called Virgin Killer – and features a naked prepubescent girl. Four days after some of Wikipedia’s pages were blocked because of the row the IWF reversed the decision and the image can once again be viewed on the band’s pages on the site.

From a Freedom of Information point of view the issue relates to an applicant asking Cambridgeshire Police “Please disclose…what is in the communications between the Police and the Internet Watch Foundation that relates to an image on Wikipedia of the cover of an album by rock band The Scorpions.”

The police force refused to either confirm or deny it had the information claiming it was covered by a S.30 (Investigations) exemption.

However, when the commissioner looked into the matter it was ruled the exemption was not applicable to the case.

It appears Cambridgeshire Police did not want to release information because it did not want to reveal that it was the force that was contacted for advice by the IWF – and in essence wanted to keep the relationship between it and the non-Governmental internet watchdog secret.

The Commissioner’s decision said this was not a valid reason under S.30 which would have needed to address the actual information itself rather than just the relationship between the two organisations.

He ruled the exemption was not applicable and so therefore did not even go on to consider the Public Interest test.

The force was also criticised over the way it conducted its internal review of the applicant’s request.

The Commissioner said: “The internal review response from the public authority did not reflect that a reconsideration of the request conforming to the description above took place. The Commissioner would advise the public authority that a response giving the outcome to an internal review should state the reasoning for why the initial refusal was upheld and should reflect that there has been a genuine reconsideration of the request.”

You can read the decision notice [here].

WARNING: If you click on this link [here] you will be taken to the Wikipedia site where you will see the image. Please do NOT click here if you are going to be offended/upset.