Police spies stole identities of dead children
John Dines, an undercover police sergeant, as
he appeared in the early 1990s when he posed
as John Barker, a protester against capitalism...
Britain's largest police force stole the identities of an estimated 80 dead children and issued fake passports in their names for use by undercover police officers.
The Metropolitan police secretly authorised the practice for covert officers infiltrating protest groups without consulting or informing the children's parents. The details are revealed in an investigation by the Guardian, which has established how over three decades generations of police officers trawled through national birth and death records in search of suitable matches. Undercover officers created aliases based on the details of the dead children and were issued with accompanying identity records such as driving licences and national insurance numbers. Some of the police officers spent up to 10 years pretending to be people who had died. The Met said the practice was not "currently" authorised [?], but announced an investigation into "past arrangements for undercover identities used by SDS [Special Demonstration Squad] officers".