The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) uncovered 17,500
requests for private information made to a private investigator by
400 journalists. Information handed over included ex-directory
addresses and contact details for security service personnel and
celebrities.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on
Culture, Media and Sport, Graham said that the ICO highlighted the
problems of the trade in personal data in a report, What Price
Privacy Now?, in 2006 but action had not been taken by the
authorities.
"Any fines you get from magistrates can be written off as a
business expense," he said, according to The Guardian newspaper.
"We were let down by the courts, who didn't seem to be interested
in levying even the pathetic fines they had at their disposal; we
were rather let down by parliament in the end, with no legislation;
and we were let down by the newspaper groups, which didn't take it
seriously."
The ICO's Motorman investigation into the activities of private
investigator Steve Whittamore uncovered 17,500 requests for private
information on behalf of 400 journalists working for some of the
UK's biggest papers, including the News of the World, whose royal
reporter Clive Goodman was later found guilty of hacking into
people's mobile phones to find stories.
In 2006 the ICO's What Price Privacy Now? report named the
newspapers which used the raided investigator, and said that the
Daily Mail used it more than any other paper.
It said it was against the Data Protection Act for someone to
obtain and sell personal data without permission. It also said that
papers' publication of stories using personal data gained by
deception breached the Data Protection Act's stipulation that
organisations must guard against unlawful data processing.
Graham defended the ICO's decision not to prosecute all the
reporters involved in the seemingly illegal purchase of personal
data uncovered by its investigation. He told MPs that his office
did not have the resources to pursue all the cases.
"It would not have been good regulation for the Information
Commissioner's Office to prioritise this particular bit of the
jungle," said. "We are concerned with the whole trade in
information."
"You would have to go through [each case] forensically to
achieve the standard of proof required in a court of law, attach
each to a story … and work out if our lawyers could get the better
of their lawyers," he said. "The appropriate response was to make
big issue of it … tackling it at source and at the top level by
legislation."
The Guardian this week
revealed that the targets of the information requests included
Government minister Peter Hain, Conservative party chairman Chris
Patten and Liberal Democrat peer Lord Avebury, as well as
celebrities such as John Cleese, union leader Arthur Scargill and
royal aide Tiggy Legge-Burke.
Private investigators obtained details by conning British
Telecom into giving them out or by using moles with access to
Government databases, the Guardian investigation revealed.
An ICO spokesman said that it has not released details of the
investigation and that it could not confirm the accuracy of the
information reported by The Guardian.
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