Damaged tools

Taiwan’s national police agency has apologised for giving out 54 infected memory sticks as prizes in a government-run quiz that was (allegedly) intended to combat cybercrime. The infected sticks carry a virus that steals personal data, and has been linked to fraud. The agency has predictably followed the established police tradition of denial, elaboration and insincere apology, rapid blame shifting and the manipulation of statistics. Its Criminal Investigation Bureau has announced that although it was not them, they are nevertheless very sorry that this has happened, and they have claimed that it is in any case all the fault of a third-party contractor. They have also pointed out that 20 of the drives have been recovered, while failing to mention that 34 are still out there. But they missed the chance to point out that, as around 250 flash drives were given out, 196 or so were hardly infected at all. This could, of course, be an elaborate and cunning establishment plan to disable the IT capabilities of young and intelligent geeks who know the answers to difficult cyber quizzes, and to thus return power to the threatened elite that ran the country from the inception of quills right through to the demise of typewriters. Staying on the subject of badly damaged tools, South African hospitals have been placed on alert for a rapist whose penis has been bitten by a woman as he assaulted her. The assailant fled after he was bitten, and is yet to book himself in for treatment. The Mpumalanga police has instructed all its health institutions to find a man with an injured private part and contact Constable Solly Mabuza as soon as possible. Constable Mabuza might get quite a few calls, for identifying the injured offender is not going to be as easy as it first appears. On average, 109 rapes per day were reported in South Africa during 2016/17, totalling 39,828 incidents. This is a slight drop from the year before, when 41,503 rapes were recorded, but hardly a triumph. There are no available statistics on how many rapists get their penis bitten per annum, but we must hope for a steady and marked increase. It may be time to consider providing potential victims with some form of self-defence training, but this could prove difficult. Distance learning is unlikely to be effective, and there are some obvious problems in staging realistic roleplays. However, I am sure the College of Policing has a module for that. Finally, and in an attempt to move away from the theme of damaged tools, the partially retired Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe has come in for some criticism for not contributing to the costs of a retirement painting of himself. The work was commissioned from, and delivered by, classically trained artist Sophie Gilbart-Denham, who has charged the MPS £7,460 (including postage) for her work. Ms Gilbart-Denham is the daughter of a Crown equerry, which is a coincidence as Lord Hogan-Howe’s wife was an assistant to the Crown Equerry responsible for the Royal Family’s horses. The painting, presumably of the former commissioner looking serious and tough, yet regal, will sit at Hendon behind dart-proof glass. Those who criticise the lavishness of such a tradition, even though the MPS is still to find £400 million savings to meet cuts imposed when he was commissioner, claim you could 3D laser print a lifelike model of Lord Hogan-Howe, fit mechanisms to make him repeat “I made an arrest at every rank” every few hours and no one would ever know he had left. Yours, Stitch