In a classic example of how a computer system malfunction can have serious negative effects, the Police National Computer currently features a glitch that stops it from linking to the Northern Ireland criminal database. This means when routine checks are made, for example when someone is arrested and their name is put on the file, the computer is not finding their previous criminal profile if it was in Northern Ireland.
One such case is the Ulster terrorists, who are all on the Northern Ireland database, one of whom was apprehended recently, but they weren’t aware they had actually got Johnny Adair, nicknamed “mad dog”, until they went and Googled his name.