"Dallas Loses 8TB of Criminal Case Data"

A large cache of criminal case data belonging to the Dallas Police Department (DPD) is thought to have been lost forever.  About 22 terabytes of data went missing from the DPD computer database when data was migrated from an online, cloud-based archive to a server in April at the city's data center.  The data that disappeared included images, video, audio, case notes, and other information gathered by police officers and detectives in relation to cases before July 28, 2020.  The quantity of information lost is considerable since one terabyte can store as many as six million documents and 250,000 images.  In a memo, district attorney John Creuzot said that it was "too soon to estimate how many cases will be affected and what the impact will be on those individual cases."  City information technology officials first noticed the absence of the case data on April 5. However, the district attorney's office was not notified of the loss until August 6. Amanda Branan, the president of the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, stated that it is concerning that it took four months for the Dallas Police Department to inform the district attorney of the loss of the data. Dallas PD attributes the data's permanent departure to the actions of a single city IT employee who it says "failed to follow proper, established procedures" while performing the data migration.  Dallas PD stated that approximately 14 of the 22 terabytes of data lost have since been recovered. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson is calling for the Dallas City Council to launch an investigation into the data loss.

Infosecurity reports: "Dallas Loses 8TB of Criminal Case Data"