A FORMER top cop has got a potentially lucrative job backing a cyber snooping system banned over privacy fears.
Ex-Met Police Commissioner Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, 61, presided over the use of terror laws to hunt down moles and costly probes into journalists’ access to phone data.
But he is supporting a controversial Israeli firm’s bid to introduce technology capable of tracking anyone carrying a mobile phone to within a metre.
The technology — banned in France — triangulates exact positions by homing in on wi-fi as well as phone signals.
Lord Hogan-Howe has joined makers Carbyne, which claims its system will only pinpoint the position of criminals and accident victims.
The Sun Says
WE’VE become all too familiar with public figures cashing in on their office by moving to corporate jobs.
But the case of Bernard Hogan-Howe, the former head of Scotland Yard, really takes the biscuit.
As Britain’s top cop, he oversaw a ludicrous witch-hunt, using anti-terror legislation to threaten the Press and haul reporters into court — only to see them cleared when it became clear the police had overstepped the law.
Now a member of the House of Lords, he’s picked up a side gig at tech firm Carbyne. The company can track ANYONE carrying a phone — that’s all of us, then — to within a metre, with terrifying consequences for the future of privacy.
No surprise that a man who spent much of his career snooping on the innocent is doing the same thing now he’s retired.
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The firm’s CEO Amir Elichai said it had already had talks with the Met, which is not on a secret list of UK forces testing the technology.
Lord Hogan-Howe declared his role on the company’s advisory board in the register of Lords members’ interests as an unpaid position. But he has been granted share options.
He said he was working with Carbyne to “help save lives and keep communities safe”.
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