Tamplin worked as a protective services officer; according to a statement of facts tendered in court he "repeatedly accessed records from the database over three years from 2007 to 2010, using his AFP email address to send the information to a personal email account". He pleaded guilty to charges of recording proscribed information in breach of police regulations.
The CT notes that Tamplin committed one of the offences on the same day that he completed an AFP online security course, in which participants learned it was illegal to distribute police information.
Details of the accessed information were suppressed. He reportedly had emailed some of the information, classed as protected or highly protected, to other people outside the police force.
He was eventually discovered after a fellow staffer received an email purporting to be from the New York Police Department, which included a link to Tamplin's website and an invitation to join an email list.
Investigators audited Tamplin's official AFP email account and found that he had been sending information from the police database to himself and others. Tamplin told investigators that he had set up a security industry website as a personal project with a view to starting his own business after he left the federal police.
He said the website was based on news and information about terrorism, mostly obtained from the search engine Google or news sites.
He had also created an email distribution list to share information with other law enforcement workers.
Tamplin told investigators there was ''no truth in the news and he needed to 'get out what really happened'''. But he also said he did not make any money from the records he sent out and believed the information was ''open source'' and ''as good as gossip''.
He conceded that management would take a ''pretty dim'' view of his behaviour and acknowledged that he did not have the authority to copy the information.
