SOCA, The Met, And The ICO - Joined Up Thinking?

Another post from a regular contributor

So, there's plenty happening with Hackgate.  Lord Justice Leveson has started to send out Section 13 letters, a couple of ex-Times employees have been arrested regarding Nightjack, Tom Crone has been arrested, and the Wapping Weeting defendants are due to plead at Southwark on September 26th.  In Scotland, Operation Rubicon's investigations have now led to the Sheridan Trial Trio being detained, arrested and charged. 

But meanwhile, there are low profile developments gathering pace (or should that be PACE...) involving the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). 

As the Leveson Inquiry starts to wind down for now, the focus for inquisitorial scrutiny will start to shift back where it was before - the Select Committees of Parliament.  The work of Tom Watson et al of the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee was crucial to unpicking allegations of News International's phone-hacking.  It was ably augmented by the Home Affairs Select Committee looking at Metropoltan Police Service (MET) handling of Hackgate and communications data interception. The Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) issued its rigorous Report in July 2011, 'Unauthorised Tapping Into or Hacking of Mobile Communications'. 

HASC scrutiny of related issues has though continued - it launched an inquiry into 'private investigators' and held evidence hearings in the spring of 2012.  Aside from issues of regulation, licensing and so on, HASC heard three pieces of evidence of real interest to Hackgate watchers.

• An unrepentant Julian Pike of Farrer & Co was asked again about News International's use of a private investigator in surveillance of Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris, lawyers acting for phone-hacking victims.
• an unexpected bombshell when (under parliamentary privilege) a witness alleged collusion and corruption of MET officers by a leading private investigator and security industry firm.
• an opportunity to re-visit OPERATION MOTORMAN with the Information Commissioner (ICO).

The HASC Report 2012, 'Private Investigators' is published here.  Deep in the written evidence is a brief supplementary submission (April 2012, p123) from the ICO which repays reading. It seems - perhaps belatedly - there might actually be some cooperation and coordination in investigatory strategy going on.  Whilst the ICO have not prosecuted any private investigators or 'enquiry agents' for the past two years, it says

We have however been engaged in one long-running and complex investigation which we expect to be able to bring to court imminently.

There is little nugget too:

The ICO is also working with other regulators and law enforcement bodies... the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) have agreed to share some of the evidence obtained in Operation Millipede with the ICO.

 It continues,

Similarly the Metropolitan Police have agreed to share some of the evidence relating to private investigators that they uncover during aspects of the Operation Wheeting investigation into phone-hacking at the News of the World. This information will be collated and used within the (ICO) investigations department to inform and support proactive investigations into rogue elements within the private investigator community.

Joined-up thinking at last by key investigation agencies and (maybe) some signs of a common determination to pursue evidence that has been gathering cobwebs too long.

And that's an intriguing turn of phrase from the ICO - "rogue elements".  One might wonder if it has anything to do with the confidential 2008 SOCA Intelligence Report called 'Private Investigators: The Rogue Element of the Private Investigation Industry and Others Unlawfully Trading in Personal Data'.

Completed by SOCA in Jan 2008, the eight page report was designated 'Restricted' until it was slipped into the public domain in early 2012.  (Hat-tip to Keith Vaz MP for noticing it on SOCA's web site.) It summarises findings about "harms inflicted to the UK by private investigators" from five un-named police investigations, up to and including 2007 when Clive GOODMAN and Glenn MULCAIRE were convicted.  Criminal activities include "unlawfully acquiring data, interception of communications, corruption, and perverting the course of justice."  It is also pointed out that many private investigators have been previously employed in law enforcement or the armed forces: "Such individuals bring with them the skills and specialist knowledge accrued during their previous careers."  Corrupt practices identified also include "accessing their own or associates' recorded convictions; attempting to discover the location of witnesses".

You can read it here.


The five anonymised investigations up to the Intelligence Report cut-off date of September 2007 could conceivably include Operation REPROOF, Operation MOTORMAN and Operation GLADE - these all relate to Hackgate.  Spoilt for choice, perhaps SOCA also included the (as-yet unconnected to Hackgate)  Operation BARBATUS.

Should SOCA consider writing a Volume 2 beyond that cut-off date, the familiar modus operandi might point to several current police Hackgate operations, and perhaps Operation ABELARD II.

Not forgetting there's that rather interesting OPERATION MILLIPEDE - the prime example of a 'Jack-in-Box' investigation.  The one that it is just so difficult to keep the lid on.

Related articles
Unlucky For Some - Section 13
A Battle Royal - Murdoch vs Monarchy
Operation Tuleta - A Second Look
Some Intriguing Hackgate "Known Unknowns"

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

Operation Tuleta - A Second Look

From a regular contributor:

Things seem to be gearing up for Operation TULETA - the least high-profile Metropolitan Police Service (MET) investigation of the three ongoing as a consequence of the hacking scandal.  The first to start, in Jan '11, was Operation WEETING into phone hacking. It was quickly followed by Operation ELVEDON, looking at newspapers' role in bribery and corruption of police and other public officials.

Operation TULETA was set up later to investigate allegations of computer hacking, interception of emails, stolen phone data etc by journalists, private invetigators and others.  Given MP Tom Watson's view that computer hacking may well turn out to dwarf the scale of phone hacking, it's worth having a closer look at TULETA - what's already in the public domain and what may be to come. A new document dump on the Leveson Inquiry web site last Friday may hold some clues.

Sienna Miller was the first to allege email hacking in her claim against News International and Glenn Mulcaire.  There are more civil litigations for email hacking in the pipeline.  On 19th October 2011, Mark Lewis gave evidence to the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee.  Paul Farrelly MP asked him (Q1275)

are you aware of any other accessing of information that may have been illegal apart from phone hacking? Is phone hacking the tip of an iceberg? 
...What about computer hacking or reading people’s e-mails?

Mark Lewis: "It seems that voice mail interception or phone hacking is old hat and that the thing to do now with the inquiry agents is to obtain information by way of e-mails. As I understand the technology, one plants a Trojan in someone’s computer by sending them an e-mail that looks innocuous, which then pinches all the e-mails sent out or received and sends them to someone else. I am pursuing a claim. Mr Justice Ross has ruled that it is not going to be part of the voice mail interception claims for a former member of military intelligence, who was subject to, shall we say, a Trojan plant. We know that. That is also subject to a police investigation, so I suppose we have to be very careful, but there is a civil claim for that."

Pressed to clarify by Louies Mensch if this involved only News International titles Lewis added, "in respect of the information that the police are obtaining about another inquiry agent in respect of computer hacking, his clients were from other newspapers."

Some of the impetus for TULETA sprang from the related Operation KALMYK (into allegations of Northern Ireland security force personnel having emails hacked), see Ian Hurst's evidence to Leveson, and Operation MILLIPEDE (which resulted in four convictions).

In essence, computer hacking and email interception via Trojan have been rumoured for years, as has collusion of journalists.  News of the World's Alex MARUNCHAK has been implicated in at least two allegations. Firstly - as far back as 2002 - the surveillance of Dave Cook and Jacqui Hames, both serving police officers. It is alleged that their emails were hacked in an attempt to 'sort out' and derail Dave Cook who was heading the fourth investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan.
Northern Ireland

Secondly, Ian Hurst's hacked emails relating Northern Ireland intelligence were allegedly faxed to MARUNCHAK at the News of the World offices in Dublin.

The Northern Ireland connection is particularly sinister.  Amongst others, Sir Hugh Orde has been informed by TULETA that his emails may have been hacked when he was Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, as has Peter Hain when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain added that "the police confirmed to me they had not eliminated any news organisation from their investigation."

Scotland

Strathclyde Police are investigating (Operation RUBICON) whether Tommy Sheridan's lawyer and a key witness in the Sheridan perjury trial had their emails hacked. Both hard copies and electronic copies of the emails are alleged to have been circulated which name and implicate senior news staff at the News of the World Scotland.

Stolen laptop and phones

Amongst the large Leveson 'taken as read' document dump is a revealing witness statement by Claire Ward, former Member of Parliament.  It makes fascinating reading as she details her treatment by journalists when she was a younger, newly-elected MP - she details alleged harassment, pressurising phone calls, suspected phone interception, and stress-inducing inaccurate press stories. In one instance, she describes a tense phone conversation with Rebekah Wade.  Most startling however (and possibly of interest to TULETA) is that her laptop computer was stolen from a guarded room in Manchester Town Hall in 2001.  She believes it may have been stolen with the possible involvement of the national press. Claire Ward is convinced that her laptop was deliberately targeted as it contained a substantial number of documents relating to Keith Vaz MP.

More recently, TULETA is investigating the possibility that mobile phones may have been stolen to order.  According to Sue Akers,

In April 2012, ...Operation Tuleta officers discovered instances where staff at NI titles appear to have been in possession of material downloaded or otherwise obtained from stolen mobile telephones. It appears from some of the documentation, which is dated around late 2010, that one mobile telephone had been examined with a view to breaking its security code so that the contents could be downloaded by experts (whose identities are unknown to Operation Tuleta at present) in different parts of the country... A significant and important line of enquiry is identifying the experts used...
One mobile telephone theft took place in Manchester and another in South West London.

In addition, TULETA is doing forensic analyses of computer hardware, phones and data "previously seized as evidence in other enquiries." 

There have been a spate of mobile phone and laptop thefts from within the Houses of Parliament, including a laptop theft from Keith Vaz - Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

It is however possible that these thefts are coincidental and entirely unconnected to TULETA issues.

The first TULETA arrest was that of a private investigator and several journalists have also been arrested.  The latest was that of an unnmamed 55yr old man in Cardiff - not known to be a journalist.  He was arrested 'on suspicion of committing offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.'

Currently, TULETA  is investigating 101 separate allegations of data intrusion, plus other related matters.  The MET will soon be returning to News Corporation's Management Standards Committee with more requests for relevant documents.  Developments in OPERATION TULETA will no doubt help establish if this is (as both Paul Farrelly and Sue Akers both put it) 'the tip of the iceberg'.

Time will tell.

Related Posts
Hackgate for Beginners
Where Now For The Motorman Files?
Hackgate - Major Upcoming Events


You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com