Police NSF who shared sensitive information with colleague given probation
A police national service officer who shared confidential information on police operations with a colleague, which ended up being used to tip off a drug abuser and his friends, was sentenced to 15 months’ probation on Monday (7 January).
Muhammad Alif Muhammad Jamil, 21, had pleaded guilty to one count of wrongful communication under the Official Secrets Act as well as five counts of transmitting obscene videos. Seven other charges relating to obscene videos and one count of unauthorised access to the police system were taken into consideration for his sentencing.
Alif, who served in the operations room of the police’s Special Operations Command (SOC) at the time of the offence, has since completed his full-time national service stint and is currently a student.
As part of his sentence, Alif will have to meet certain conditions, including staying indoors between 10pm and 6am every day, and serving 150 hours of community service. His mother has also put up a $5,000 bond to ensure his good behaviour.
The fellow national serviceman to whom Alif sent the photo, 21-year-old Muhd Firdaus Abdullah, has since been dealt with by the court over a string of other offences.
Photo sent to drug abuser
On 4 October 2016, while Alif was on duty in the SOC operations room, Firdaus sent him a request through WhatsApp to check for police operations.
Alif then accessed the room’s system and took a photo of the screen showing a list of First Information Reports – which contain information on suspected criminal activities – that had been made on 4 October as well as their locations and timings.
He did so even though he was authorised to access the system only when the Police Operations Centre called in to activate the SOC troops.
Alif then sent the photo to Firdaus. According to the prosecution, he did not know why Firdaus wanted the information, nor did he ask the latter about it.
Firdaus later sent the photograph to his sister’s boyfriend, who forwarded it to a drug abuser. The drug abuser shared the photo his friends with the message “Stop everything tonite (sic) full ops”.
When a suspected female drug abuser was arrested the next day, officers found the photo in her phone. Alif’s involvement was uncovered as a result.
Posted obscene vides on blog
In April that year, Alif also uploaded videos of a sexual nature onto his Tumblr blog – through which he also invited others to contribute obscene videos with local content.
One contribution he received was from a 26-year-old man who sent a video of his former girlfriend in a state of undress. The man, whose relationship with the woman ended on a bad note, asked Alif to make the video go viral on 17 April 2016. Alif uploaded the video onto his blog that same day.
Three days later, a friend of the woman told her of the video and she then confronted her ex-boyfriend. She later filed a police report. Alif was instructed by the ex-boyfriend to delete the video on the same day and he did so.
Alif was also found to have uploaded at least four other obscene videos. The police, however, were unable the trace the identities of their senders.
For the charge of wrongful communication, Alif could have been jailed up to two years and fined a maximum $2,000.
For each count of transmitting an obscene video, Alif could have been jail up to three months, fined, or both.
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