[LINK] More Murdoch company hacking - Sky news

Roger Clarke Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Fri Apr 6 11:35:30 AEST 2012


At 10:39 +1000 6/4/12, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>UK's Sky News: We hacked in the public interest
>http://www.9news.com/money/261040/75/UKs-Sky-News-We-hacked-in-the-public-interest
>LONDON (AP) - Rupert Murdoch's Sky News channel twice authorized its
>reporters to hack into computers ...
>Sky News said in a statement Thursday that in one case it broke into
>emails belonging to Anne and John Darwin, the so-called "canoe
>couple" who became notorious in Britain after the latter faked his
>own death in a boating accident as part of an elaborate insurance
>scam. ...

Looking at this through Australian eyes, two analyses are needed:

1.  do such actions breach any criminal law provisions, in particular
     the 'computer crimes' provisions of the Criminal Code?

2.  do such actions breach applicable Media Codes?

3.  would such actions breach aa appropriately-written Media Code?


Re 1:
APF resources at:
http://www.privacy.org.au/Resources/PLawsClth.html
http://www.privacy.org.au/Resources/PLawsST.html
lead to:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cca1995115/sch1.html
See ss. 476-478.  Under s.477, such access is an offence ONLY if "the 
person intends to commit, or facilitate the commission of, a serious 
offence", and "'serious offence' means an offence that is punishable 
by imprisonment for life or a period of 5 or more years"
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s308.html
s.308C makes such access an offence ONLY if it is done "with the 
intention of committing a serious indictable offence".  I haven't 
found the definition of that term

So my quick take is that computer hacking for fun or profit, in 
public interest, or even to find out what a celebrity says to their 
lover, is NOT an offence except in quite extreme circumstances, e.g. 
if you use what you find out for extortion.


Re 2:
Here's what News Ltd (the Australian arm) says in its Code:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/PandM-Codes.html#News
5. Covert activities
5.1 Journalists and photographers may at times have to operate 
surreptitiously to expose crime, significantly anti-social conduct, 
public deception or some other matter in the public interest.
All such operations must be approved in advance by the editor. This 
approval will be given only where good cause exists to suspect crime 
or deception has taken place, and after all other means of gathering 
the facts have been exhausted.
The editorial executive must be satisfied the importance of 
publishing the information sought outweighs any damage to trust and 
credibility which your newspaper might suffer by allowing employees 
to operate surreptitiously.
Where appropriate, the nature and reasons for operating covertly 
should be disclosed to readers.

So such actions would not be in breach of News Ltd's own Code.  (And 
the Code has little impact and virtually no sanctions or enforcement, 
so it wouldn't make any difference if it did).


And here's what the Australian Press Council says:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/PandM-Codes.html#APC
  ... news obtained by unfair or dishonest means should not be 
published unless there is an overriding public interest. Generally, 
journalists should identify themselves as such. However, journalists 
and photographers may at times need to operate surreptitiously to 
expose crime, significantly anti-social conduct, public deception or 
some other matter in the public interest.

In other words, it's not a breach of the APC Code.  (And the Code has 
only limited impact, and limited sanctions, so it wouldn't make a 
huge amount of difference if it did;  although the courts might take 
some notice of it, at least in civil cases, if there were some 
pejorative statement in the Code).


Re 3:
Here's what an appropriate Code might say:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/PMN.html#App1
Foundation Principles
Information Gathering:
4.   The nature of the activities, and their degree of intrusiveness:
*   must be proportionate to the nature and significance of the 
public interest arising in the particular circumstances

Specific Principles
A3. Information-Gathering Behaviour
The following data-gathering activities are breaches of this Code, 
unless they are justified by an overriding public interest, taking 
into account relevant factors, and in particular the sensitivity of 
the context and the degree of discomfort, anger or distress that the 
performance of the activity may give rise to:
3.   activities that involve deception ...

[Mmmm, my current draft is deficient, in that it doesn't directly 
address hacking.
[I've been so focussed on all the other tricky bits, that I omitted 
the bleeding obvious.

[The long and the short of it is:

I think that the media *should* have some rope to hang itself with. 
I'm less concerned about people faking their own death in order to 
defraud an insurance company, and more concerned about serious graft 
and corruption by public officials, government agencies and 
corporations.  But there should be some pretty serious sanctions 
where the intrusive behaviour isn't justified by the public interest; 
and there are precisely none.]

_____________________________________________________________________


At 10:39 +1000 6/4/12, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>UK's Sky News: We hacked in the public interest
>
>http://www.9news.com/money/261040/75/UKs-Sky-News-We-hacked-in-the-public-interest
>
>
>10:49 AM, Apr 5, 2012
>
>LONDON (AP) - Rupert Murdoch's Sky News channel twice authorized its
>reporters to hack into computers, a potentially embarrassing
>revelation that could further dent the media tycoon's hope of
>acquiring full control over satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
>
>Sky News said in a statement Thursday that in one case it broke into
>emails belonging to Anne and John Darwin, the so-called "canoe
>couple" who became notorious in Britain after the latter faked his
>own death in a boating accident as part of an elaborate insurance
>scam. The circumstances surrounding the second case weren't made clear.
>
>Sky News acknowledged intercepting the canoe couple's emails, but
>said the material was later handed to police and insisted it had done
>nothing wrong.
>
>"We stand by these actions as editorially justified and in the public
>interest. We do not take such decisions lightly or frequently," Sky
>News chief John Ryley said in a statement.
>
>He noted that, in a 2004 investigation, a Sky News journalists had
>bought an Uzi submachine gun to illustrate the availability of banned
>weapons in Britain. In 2003, a reporter sneaked into a restricted
>area at London's Heathrow Airport to highlight security failings.
>
>"These investigations serve the public interest and are a legitimate
>part of responsible journalism," Ryley said.
>
>Shares in BSkyB fell about 2.8 percent following the news to 639
>pence ($10.11).
>
>A media frenzy was kicked off when John Darwin - long thought to have
>died in a boating accident in the North Sea - walked into a London
>police station in late 2007 and said: "I think I'm a missing person."
>
>He claimed to have amnesia and said he could remember nothing since
>2000, but his story unraveled as journalists and police started
>digging into his background.
>
>Sky News didn't identify which of its stories was the result of
>hacking, but in an article dated July 21, 2008, journalist Gerard
>Tubb said the channel had uncovered documentary evidence showing that
>John Darwin had decided to come back to England because he was having
>trouble staying in Panama.
>
>"We discovered an email," the article begins, without giving any
>explanation of how the message was obtained. Sky declined to make
>Tubb or Ryley available for interviews.
>
>The company's public interest defense immediately drew skepticism
>from British legal experts.
>
>David Allen Green, media lawyer at Preiskel & Co., said that there
>was no such thing as a public interest defense as far as Britain's
>Computer Misuse Act was concerned.
>
>"It is not possible for the editor of any news organization to
>authorize criminal acts," said Green, who's been a frequent critic
>Murdoch's News Corp.
>
>Britain's Crown Prosecution Service can decide, however, that it
>wouldn't serve the public interest to file charges.
>
>"As Sky News took the hacked emails to the police themselves, it
>appears that any prosecution was decided not to be in public
>interest," Green said in a message posted to Twitter.
>
>Sky's email hacking, first reported in Britain's Guardian newspaper,
>could be a further headache for Murdoch. His international media
>empire has spent the better part of a year in the spotlight over
>widespread illegal behavior at his now-defunct News of the World
>tabloid, where journalists routinely hacked into public figures'
>phones in an effort to win scoops.
>
>News Corp. owns a 39.1 percent stake in BSkyB, which owns Sky News,
>and Murdoch was forced to abandon a potentially lucrative bid for
>full control of the broadcaster after the phone hacking scandal
>boiled over in July.
>
>The scandal has increasingly embroiled BSkyB and Murdoch's son James
>- the broadcaster's chairman until earlier this week.
>
>James, the former head of his father's British newspaper division,
>has long insisted that he knew nothing of the widespread wrongdoing
>at the News of the World. With that claim coming under increasing
>scrutiny, the 39-year-old stepped down Tuesday in a move to insulate
>BSkyB from the scandal.
>
>Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant, whose own phone was hacked by the
>News of the World, said he was writing to BSkyB to ask when the
>company's board members knew about the hacking.
>
>"Is this why James left?" Bryant asked on Twitter.
>
>In a separate development, a person close to the case said that News
>of the World publisher News International was challenging celebrity
>phone hacking victim Sienna Miller over the size of her legal bill.
>
>Miller won 100,000 pounds (about $160,000) from News International
>last year after the company admitted eavesdropping on her phone
>messages, but there's been no agreement on legal costs and the issue
>is headed to court, the person said. He spoke anonymously because the
>information wasn't cleared for release.
>
>News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop declined comment, as did
>Miller's lawyer, Mark Thomson.
>
>The phone hacking scandal has already cost News Corp. nearly $200
>million, much of it in legal and consulting fees.
>
>(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
>
>
>
>Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
>jwhit at janwhitaker.com
>blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
>business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
>
>Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or
>sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
>~Madeline L'Engle, writer
>
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-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University



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