Re: "the data wasn't collated or held in an accessible format"
" Okay, so here we have different police forces that have spent valuable money on recording equipment, then state that said equipment is either not used, records not kept or not accessible, or records even not made."
- you are missing the codicil - Big Brother Watch was obtaining their data using Freedom of Information requests. The data may well be there, but would take time to collate. Organisations store data for their own requirements, which often don't fit well with the needs of people making FOI requests.
If collating the data is possible, but predicted to taken over a certain number of hours, then BBW would have been told this, and given the option of paying for the collation to occur. I haven't yet seen anyone willing to pay for the information they want on an FOI.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
