Police did not know names could have been deleted
A police complaints body was unaware it could have taken steps to remove from the internet the personal details of 20,000 people who have complained against the force over the past decade.
The safety of the complainants may have been jeopardised by a blunder that led to their names, addresses and identity card numbers being available on the Net.
Search engine Google said yesterday it had removed archived links to the list on Sunday, three days after the South China Morning Post inquired about the blunder.
Google spokeswoman Debbie Frost said the material was only deleted after the company became aware of the problem.
The Independent Police Complaints Council said on Saturday it had approached Google 'through the proper channels' when it became known that the list remained in the public domain even though the website on which it appeared had been deleted.