Piggybacking offences 804/2024

FOI Reference: 804/2024

Request:

Could you please share information on the number of 'piggybacking' (establishing a wireless Internet connection by using another subscriber's wireless Internet access) offences recorded in the last five years (2018-23), broken down by the number of convictions each year?                                              

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Response

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.

I can confirm that the cost of determining whether any information relative to this request is or isn’t held is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond therefore we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12 (2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies. The following exemption has been applied to the whole of the information you have requested:

Section 12(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of determining what information is held, if any, relevant to your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the “appropriate level” as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 87,609 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information department has been advised that some of the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format. There is no specific crime code for “piggybacking” off of another subscriber’s wireless Internet connection that we can search on in order to retrieve this data. Therefore, the only way in which we would be able to obtain this information, would be to manually read through every call log and crime report for the time frame requested in order to establish whether the report relates to that of “piggybacking”. 

It has been established that there are a total of 1,051,310 records that cover the period of your request.  It has also been established that it would take a minimum of 5 minutes to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of your request (as outlined above). The process outlined results in the below time estimate.

Incident volume breakdown:

2018 – 137,629

2019 – 131,127

2020 – 130,045

2021 – 136,328

2022 – 138,304

2023 – 161,887

This totals to 835,320 records. It would take an estimated 5 minutes to review, totalling to 69,610 hours of work.

Crime volume breakdown:

2018 – 29,154

2019 – 32,586

2020 – 31,796

2021 – 40,433

2022 – 45,042

2023– 36,979

This totals to 215,990 records. It would take an estimated 5 minutes to review, totalling to 17,999 hours of work.

Time estimate to complete task =  87,609 hours

In accordance therefore with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the Whole of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours, should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact the Freedom of Information Unit. Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the public authorities right to cite exemptions if relevant.

It should be noted that as a result of the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such information that the information released may or may not be accurate.

Furthermore, it should also be noted that Police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide crime statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the crime data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force's response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 27/08/2024)