The force began looking into replacing its ageing criminal intelligence system in 2005.

BBC: Surrey Police scrap multimillion-pound computer system

The court was told he treated the criminal intelligence system "as a dating agency" by accessing highly sensitive police data to perform background checks on women and their former partners after visits to victims of crime.

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But the expansion of the system of suspicious activity reports (SARs) is swamping the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the authority responsible for processing and analysing them and then passing them on to prosecutors and police.

BBC: Analysis