A major row has erupted over the role of the Information Commissioner’s Office in handling evidence of widespread personal data theft by British journalists, with one side claiming it had its ‘head in the sand’, while the other maintaining it was simply following legal advice.
The bust-up, sparked at the Leveson Inquiry, centres on Operation Motorman, an investigation begun in 2002. This probe uncovered that private investigators, including Steve Whittamore, kept records detailing customers who had paid them for ‘blagging’ services.
In evidence to the inquiry, former ICO senior investigator Alex Owens claimed he was told that newspapers were “too big” to take on. He maintained that the ICO had “grossly understated” the number of requests for personal information made to Whittamore by journalists when it had reported the evidence it had uncovered.
Owens said that no one from the ICO’s investigations unit “ever spoke to a journalist” about findings made during Operation Motorman. The ICO typically had its “heads buried in the sand,” Owens said. “Their policy was basically: if you ignore a problem long enough, it will go away”.
But in response, former ICO deputy commissioner Francis Aldhouse said legal advisors to the ICO recommended that “informal cautioning” of journalists and editors was the way forward, claiming pursuing prosecutions could have had a “chilling effect” on press freedom.
He added: “The Office, although originally established to protect the rights of individuals to the proper processing of their personal data … was and has to be also aware of the importance of the right to freedom of expression and consequently of the freedom of the press. The pursuit of journalists could have a chilling effect on those rights.”
Earlier this summer, the Parliamentary Committee investigation into phone hacking heard that the ICO had handed over further evidence from Operation Motorman to the Metropolitan Police in February of this year.
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