The Information Commissioner’s Office has been heavily criticised for ‘missing the opportunity’ nearly a decade ago to come down hard on journalists’ cavalier attitude to data laws, according to the findings of the Leveson Report.
The ICO first investigated phone hacking and so-called blagging back in 2002, under an investigation dubbed Operation Motorman.
Material uncovered by the ICO “constituted evidence of serious and systemic illegality and poor practice in the acquisition and use of personal information which could have spread across the press as a whole”, the Report said.
It criticised the ICO for not taking further action: “In the circumstances, an opportunity was missed to address problems in the culture, practices and ethics of the press, and to safeguard the position of victims.”
However, the ICO has always maintained that its legal advisors had recommended that informal cautioning of journalists and editors was the way forward, claiming pursuing prosecutions could have had a “chilling effect” on press freedom.
The Leveson Report’s call for data protection legislation to be tightened – and to even include the threat of a 2-year jail sentence for journalists who break it – is one of the major sticking points cited by David Cameron.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons he was “instinctively concerned about this proposal”.
Under current law, journalists are allowed to obtain and communicate private information in certain circumstances, if they are doing so in the course of an investigation that is in the public interest.
The Leveson Report recommends limiting these privileges only to information that is “necessary for publication”.
Within the next six months, Lord Justice Leveson says, the Information Commissioner should publish “comprehensive good practice guidelines” to remove any ambiguity over how the law applies to journalists.
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