Operation Motorman was a 2003 investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office into allegations of offences under the Data Protection Act by the British press. The ICO first became aware of the scale of the problem in November 2002, when an ICO investigator attended a search under warrant of , a private investigator in Surrey. Documents found on the premises revealed the misuse of data from the Police National Computer. This discovery led to two investigations: Operation Motorman, conducted by the ICO and led by ICO Senior Investigator Alec Owens, who prior to joining the ICO had been a Merseyside Police Inspector; and Operation Glade, conducted by the Metropolitan Police.