You don’t get to be a tabloid without the police issue cheerleading outfit. Especially if you’re one of the mid-market examples, constantly worried about immigrants and the unemployed. The Express managed to spend money watching a range of terrorist suspects and those in the police who have watched them. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Operation Motorman
The Daily Mail, in a rage about solicitors allegedly employing rogue private investigators, has denounced a ‘wall of silence‘ among big law firms while at the same time accusing them of using ‘nothing but weasel words’. Continue reading
But the ICO were not the only ones furious with Dacre and co over their lobbying against custodial penalties under section 55 of the Data Protection Act. Writing in the Guardian, 7 April 2008, the paper’s investigations editor David Leigh stated that: ‘Rarely has there been a more disgraceful behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign’ than the one outlined above. He continued: ‘Tabloid newspapers want the right to commit crimes with impunity … And they have the brazenness to complain that this campaign is designed to protect “investigative journalism”’. Continue reading
Notwithstanding the representations of the PCC and others the proposal to toughen the sanctions for infringing the DPA were endorsed by the DCMS Committee, which stated that ‘we believe that sufficient safeguards exist to protect legitimate investigative journalism and do not believe that the introduction of custodial sentences for offences under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 would have the chilling effect claimed by the press”. It also noted with approval the fact that the government had in February 2007 proposed to amend Section 60 of the DPA (via the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which was then going through Parliament) so as to introduce exactly the sanction recommended by the ICO. Continue reading
Intimidated by the press, disappointed by the PCC and thwarted by the courts, the ICO decided to go public about data theft, in May 2006 publishing the report What Price Privacy? which discussed Motorman, inter alia. It also raised the question of the inadequacy of the penalties for breaking the DPA: Continue reading
In March 2003, investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), raided the offices of a private detective, Steve Whittamore. As Tom Watson and Martin Hickman put it: “They were amazed at what they discovered: Britain’s best-selling newspapers and magazines were driving a thriving black market in illegal data, requesting (and receiving) ex-directory numbers, car registration numbers, health records and criminal records. The targets ranged from glamorous actresses such as Elizabeth Hurley to the families of victims of newsworthy crimes, such as the parents of Holly Wells, a child murdered by the paedophile Ian Huntley at Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002. (28-9). Continue reading
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