Police Scotland has tried to play down its use of new technology which can override mobile phone passwords to hack devices and harvest data.
After the Sunday Herald revealed secretive trials of these "cyber kiosks" at police stations in Edinburgh and Stirling, which saw hundreds of phones accessed without the knowledge of the owners, the force said the pilot was over and there would be no more trials.
Then it emerged the force spent hundreds of thousands of pounds buying 41 kiosks which are to be distributed to police stations throughout Scotland.
Police Scotland swiftly sought to reassure the public that private information would not be downloaded, insisting the kiosks are used only to view data.
However, the interest of MSPs was peaked and a senior officer hauled before a Holyrood committee for questioning this week.
It then emerged the devices can be used to download data onto discs without the knowledge of the owner, be they a suspect or witness. Not only that, police have yet to work out how to encrypt these discs.
MSPs were left wide eyed when the senior officer had no idea whether human rights or privacy assessments were carried out.
The entire saga serves to underline how evasive Police Scotland appears about this new technology.
Senior officers will now have to report back to the committee about why they pressed ahead without public consultation.
The force should listen to MSPs and halt the rollout until politicians, the media, and most importantly the public, can get straight answers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here