Sky News admits hacking emails of 'canoe man'

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/05/sky-news-hacking-emails-canoe-man

By Dan Sabbagh, Nick Davies and Robert Booth
guardian.co.uk
5 April 2012

Sky News has admitted that one of its senior executives authorised a 
journalist to conduct email hacking on two separate occasions that it 
said were "in the public interest" – even though intercepting emails is 
a prima facie breach of the Computer Misuse Act, to which there is no 
such defence written in law.

Gerard Tubb, the broadcaster's northern England correspondent, accessed 
emails belonging to John Darwin, the "canoe man" accused of faking his 
own death, when his wife, Anne, was due to stand trial for deception in 
July 2008. The reporter built up a database of emails that he believed 
would help defeat Anne Darwin's defence; her husband had pleaded guilty 
to seven charges of deception before her trial.

The same reporter accessed the email accounts of a suspected paedophile 
and his wife in an investigation that did not lead to any material being 
published or broadcast, according to a statement sent to the Guardian by 
Sky, which is part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Both instances of hacking were approved by Simon Cole, the managing 
editor of Sky News.

[...]

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