Witness Protection, Anyone?

The latest from my regular contributor.

"The Rogue Element of the Private Investigation Industry and Others Unlawfully Trading in Personal Data"

The first version Serious Organised Crime Agency report (2008) was made public in July 2012. It said (p5) there was evidence that private investigators were
(c) accessing details of current investigations against a criminal or criminal group;
(h) attempting to discover location of witnesses

A second version SOCA report (2008) was published July 2013. That version gave more detail, stating private investigators were also (p6)

(j) attempting to discover identity of CHlSes; (Covert Human Intelligence Sources)
(l) attempting to discover location of witnesses under police protection to intimidate them:

July 2nd 2013
The Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) took evidence from SOCA's Chair SIR IAN ANDREWS and Director General TREVOR PEARCE. (transcript here)

HASC Chair Keith Vaz cited recent press reports brought to the Committee's attention: "We have also read that private investigators were hired by criminal gangs to infiltrate the witness protection programme... there are criminal acts that have taken place here. The breaking into the witness protection programme is a pretty serious issue.

Trevor Pearce: Other than seeing in the media reporting, I have never heard anything formerly. As a law enforcement officer who has had some significant engagement with the undercover world and the protected persons’ world, I have not heard of that before."

July 9th 2013 
HASC took evidence from Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations (ACSO) CRESSIDA DICK. Nicola Blackwood MP asked about the security and integrity of the MET witness protection programme given press reports of breaches by corrupt private investigators, as mentioned in the 2008 SOCA Report. CRESSIDA DICK responded by clarifying that the SOCA Report was a "strategic analysis of MET material". so it gave nothing to the MET by way of NEW information. She said however that the MET Directorate of Professional Standards and Witness Protection were "highly alert to the media coverage." A scoping exercice is currently underway. Though it was "not surprising serious organised criminals" might attempt to access information on those in witness protection, "we have not had any examples."

"There is risk..., intelligence sometimes that they are seeking to do so...(but) we are not aware of anything in the Metropolitan Police of infiltration of witness protection."

SOCA REPORT SOURCE MATERIAL
The SOCA strategic analysis utilised five indicative serious crime investigations, plus incorporated intelligence from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) investigation Operation MOTORMAN. (for background see here)

There was a joint Devon and Cornwall Police/ICO raid at the premises of private investigator John BOYALL which revealed that he and another private investigator - Steve WHITTAMORE- were both engaged in illegal data procurement (here).

The seizure included evidence of attempted access to extremely confidential material, according to ICO investigating officer Alex Owens (p4 here):

One VRM (Vehicle Registraion Mark) particular was of great concern to me because clearly written alongside it was ’Protected Number’; Having served within Special Branch during my Police service I knew this particular VRM must relate to a very sensitive individual or operation within the Police. This was subsequently confirmed to me by the Metropolitan Police although I requested no detail.

Boyall sold information on as he was "Sub-contracted to supply information to Stephen Whittamore. Whittamore, Boyall, King and Marshall (Operation Glade) were charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office. Boyall and Whittamore were later charged with obtaining information contrary to s55 of the DPA 1998 and received conditional discharge 15.4.05." (p213 here)

OPERATION CARYATID
One of the five serious crime investigations assessed by SOCA was Operation CARYATID which had resulted in custodial sentences for Clive GOODMAN and private investigator Glenn MULCAIRE. The Investigating Officer (IO) Keith Surtees described the initial handling of the chaotic Mulcaire papers seized on his arrest (p50 here)

I don't recognise a notebook, because I don't recall actually finding one or seeing one. I do recall lots of loose-leaf A4 pieces of paper, as I've said, with various stages of research on, and I think I refer to that within this decision. I see that through the process of -- I think it's probably from August 9, 10 (2006) onwards. I firstly negotiate a group of officers, I think somewhere in the region of 20 or 30 officers, who I negotiate because they're not anti-terrorist branch officers because they're all busy doing Operation Overt and everything else. They're Special Branch officers, they're vetted to the highest level, and it's those officers, I negotiate their overtime, because they're working through weekends when they should be off, and they work through I think for a period of five to seven days to go through all of the documentation, and with that they're briefed by me at the beginning around what I want them to do with that in the first instance, which is to ascertain whether there's anything to undermine or assist the police case with regard to Goodman and Mulcaire, because by then we've charged both Goodman and Mulcaire and my obligations under CPIA kick in

THE MET GIVES EVIDENCE
A flawed victim notification policy was challenged later, in September 2011, when there was the Judicial Review -

THE QUEEN on the application of (Claimants) ,CHRIS BRYANT MP, BRIAN PADDICK, LORD PRESCOTT, 'HJK', BEN JACKSON
and the COMMISSIONER of the POLICE of the METROPOLIS (Defendant)

The claimants alleged the MET had failed to notify them that they had been phone hacking targets of private investigator Glenn MULCAIRE. The MET's Mark Maberly was required to give a statement in evidence. He had been Case Officer of the original investigation into Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire - Operation CARYATID. Maberly's statement said (para 50)

On 23rd November 2006 a report was produced by the Directorate of Professional Standards which detailed the results of the examination of the computers and other storage media recovered during the original searches. The report would have been collected shortly after. Included within the report was a computerised address and phonebook of contacts including potential targets. The contents of the report were brought to the attention of the Investigating Officer Keith Surtees. Following on from receipt of this report and in consultation with the SIO, DC Green and I met with an officer from the witness protection unit. There was concern that within the contents of the report were the details of persons who were given new identities as part of a witness protection programme. Those in the programme would include both witnesses and defendants to high profile serious crime. I provided the list for him to view and it quickly became apparent that contained within were names of interest to him. I provided him with a copy of the report to take away. I had no further contact with this officer about the report or the details contained within.

Keith Surtees' evidence to Leveson concurred (p72-73 here):

MR JAY: There were names though in the project list, as it were, that according to Detective Sergeant Maberly were on the witness protection programme. Is that something you knew about?
A. Yes. It was brought to my attention that some names here within this document may well have been from the witness protection programme. What I instructed DS Maberly to do was to contact the witness protection unit, get them to come across to our office, show them the document, get them to look at it, and if there were any risks to people they were protecting, take whatever mitigation they needed to take to protect them. I didn't ask or seek information from the witness protection people around the quantity or individual details of who --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Not individual details, but weren't you interested to know whether it was in fact the case?
A. I knew it was the case on some of them because it was quite obvious it was the case.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Didn't that itself create an enormous issue for you? This must be among some of the most confidential information that's held.
A. Yes, and the officer from the witness protection unit was best placed to take whatever remedial action needed to be taken in regards to that. In terms of the provenance of the information, that also concerned me, yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: But you didn't do anything about that.
A. I had conversations throughout May, June, July and August in terms of the investigation. I had conversations August, September, October, November with regards to the various drips of information that were coming through, and briefed those up.
Q But in that context, if the conspiracy was limited to Goodman and Mulcaire, there would be concern but there wouldn't be enormous concern, but if the conspiracy went wider, as you suspected it did, to others at News International, that concern would be multiplied, wouldn't it, in relation to possible prejudice to those on the witness protection programme?
A. Witness protection programme, access to government ministers, access to military, right across. There were lots and lots of concerns, yes, including the witness protection issues, yes. 

CONCLUSIONS
To sum up, this seems to be the chain of communications:

- Metropolitan Police Service SPECIALIST OPERATIONS undertook the original phone hacking investigation - Operation CARYATID - into Goodman and Mulcaire.

- The CARYATID Team borrowed a crew of expensive SPECIAL BRANCH officers with elite Developed Vetting status to undertake a preliminary sift and summary of the Mulcaire papers.

- The resultant summaries revealed that multiple, highly sensitive witness information had been compromised. That sensitive information was communicated to the WITNESS PROTECTION UNIT by the Investigating Officer, who also briefed it up through SPECIALIST OPERATIONS.

- Then the MET provided SOCA with extensive information on the Goodman/Mulcaire investigation for strategic assessment. SOCA undertook its crucial risk analysis , including CARYATID and MOTORMAN, and circulated their restricted Report to key senior policy-makers and agencies.

- The MET was provided with the SOCA Report in Feb 2008. The Director General of SOCA believes it would have gone to the Directorate of Professional Standards and/ or to the Deputy Commissioner.

But five years later, in 2013, neither SOCA nor current ACSO MET SPECIALIST OPERATIONS have ever heard of any private investigator compromising highly secret witness protection data. And that is despite two senior (still serving) officers giving very public evidence twice - to the Judicial Review and to the Leveson Inquiry.

Hackgate has certainly prompted senior rank resignations at the MET. But this can only partially account for the apprently poor 'corporate memory'.

Related Articles
Mayor Boris And The Met Payoffs
Project Riverside And The SOCA Report
All Rise - Justice Saunders At Southwark
The Met - Red Flags And Red Tops
Hackgate - Issues For The Burnton Inquiry Into The Murder Of Daniel Morgan
Hackgate - The IPCC and Surrey's "Collective Amnesia"
Hackgate - Alex Marunchak - Presumed Innocent
Hackgate - Springwatch

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

Mayor Boris And The Met Payoffs

The latest from my regular contributor.

There was an interesting short exchange at the Public Accounts Select Committee on 3rd July. The subject under discussion was 'Confidentiality Clauses and Special Severance Payments' - primarily NHS executives' compromise agreements - a.k.a. unpopular large payoffs at public expense.

In amongst questioning there was that little something Hackgate-related, between Margaret Hodge (Chair) and Sharon White, (Director General, Public Services, HM Treasury):

Q123 Chair: Can I emphasise that this is not just the Department of Health? Paul Stephenson, the former commissioner who left because of his relationship and links with the News of the World, got over £176,000 after he’d signed an agreement. John Yates also left after the phone hacking scandal; he got £86,000 on top of his £120,000 salary. It is not just NHS oversight. You will have signed those off.

Sharon White: I don’t know the detail of the cases but there is a general point for the Treasury to take back on the basis of this discussion which is whether and how we might have a system that is more- 

Q124 Chair: I tell you what astounds us, which is why you are getting uniform shock around the table: these are high-profile cases we are talking about. These are not cases where it could well be that Paula Diggle or her officials in the Treasury would not have heard of them. Morecambe Bay is high profile. North Staffs is high profile. The Met Police and phone hacking is high profile. Yet somehow they get signed off through the Treasury. 

Sharon White: In the case of the police, this is not part of our approval process. We would not have signed off those individual cases.

So who DID sign Stephenson's and Yates' payments off? What criteria were used to decide and calculate payments over and above their voluntary resignations? What were the terms and conditions of the relevant compromise agreements? What was the quantum of confidentiality clauses/payments? And why?

Somebody needs to ask similar questions about those settlements as were asked about Gordon Taylor, Clive Goodman, Glenn Mulcaire and Andy Coulson.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MET or MPS) Management Board or Human Resources couldn't conceivably made the Stephenson/Yates agreements without referring them to the very top for approval. Presumably then, they were signed off by the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), now known as the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). Although to be absolutely fair to the MPA - responsible for scrutiny of MET spending - they didn't know when the MET had spent millions on a fleet of secret aircraft (here).  But the buck now stops with Boris Johnson:

The Deputy Mayor will discharge the vast majority of MOPAC’s duties however the Mayor remains responsible for issuing his Police and Crime Plan, and for the appointment and removal of senior Metropolitan police officers." "...the role of Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) in London is analogous to that of an elected Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) elsewhere. Although not directly elected, once the Mayor as occupant of MOPAC delegates his authority, the DMPC has all other powers and duties of a PCC.

Prior to Jan 2012, whilst Stephenson and Yates' severance payments were negotiated and approved, the Chair of MPA was Kit Malthouse. It is apparent from Malthouse's evidence to the Leveson Inquiry that he liaised with Boris very closely on appropriate mayoral responses to the News International scandal.

The Telegraph reported:

The London Mayor's deputy for policing, Kit Malthouse, was informed on Sep 10, 2010 that Scotland Yard detectives were looking into new claims made in a New York Times article." Five days later, when asked about phone hacking at Mayor's Question time, Boris Johnson said: "I am almost in continuous conversations with my deputy mayor for policing (Mr Malthouse) about this and other matters. It would be fair to say that he and I have discussed this. The conclusion of our conversation would be obvious from what I have said.... In other words, this is a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour Party and that we do not intend to get involved with it.

There was apparently at least one accidentally undeclared meeting between Boris and Rupert Murdoch in 2011, and his continuing support for beleaguered News Corp was evidenced by Boris hosting Rupert & Wendi Murdoch's VIP visit to the 2012 Olympics.

It has also been reported that Boris recently accepted an invite to dinner at Murdoch's London home. This drew some criticism as "Johnson also has ultimate, but not operational, responsibility for the Metropolitan Police, the force investigating phone hacking by Murdoch's News of the World and alleged corrupt payments made by Sun journalists.

HOME AFFAIRS SELECT COMMITTEE
Fortunately the Home Affairs Select Committee can, if it chooses, ask Boris more about the huge Stephenson/Yates compromise payments when Boris appears before them next Tuesday afternoon, 9th July:

3.15 pm Wilson Room, Portcullis HouseSir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Metropolitan Police Commissioner
4.15pmBoris Johnson, Mayor of London

Committee Chairman Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP said:

Public confidence in policing in London has been rocked by the devastating revelations that undercover police officers sought to gather information on the Lawrence family in the wake of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. The Committee will ask the Commissioner at what level this decision was taken, and why this information was withheld from the subsequent Macpherson inquiry.
The Committee also welcomes the first opportunity it has had to quiz the Mayor of London since he took office in 2008. It plans to seek his views on how public confidence can be rebuilt...

Keith Vaz sounds as though he is enthusiastic about Boris's first HASC appearance, though it is not known if any questions will be asked about former head of MPA Kit Malthouse - of whom MET Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick told the Leveson Inquiry (pp37-38 here):

I'm conscious that Sir Paul (Stephenson) made mention in his evidence of the conversations that he was having -- I didn't know he was having, actually -- with our then chair of our authority around the phone hacking investigation, Operation Weeting, in the early part of this year -- sorry, early part of 2011. You'll be aware that I was the management board member for that, and the line manager for Ms Akers. On a couple of occasions, Mr Malthouse, I thought jokingly, said to me: "I hope you're not putting too many resources into this, Cressida", and on the third occasion, when he said it again, I said, "Well, that's my decision and not yours, and that's why I'm operationally independent

That operational independence might come under further scrutiny on Tuesday as AC Cressida Dick too has been called before HASC

Tuesday 9 July 2013, Wilson Room, Portcullis HouseAt 2.45pm Cressida Dick, Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police
Commander Neil Basu, Metropolitan Police

Committee Chairman Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP said: 

It has been several months since the Committee last received an update from the Met on its hacking investigations – Operations Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta have collectively been going for more than six years and cost the taxpayer more than £20 million. We intend to explore progress on these operations and ask when they might reach a conclusion. We will also seek a response from the Met on Rupert Murdoch’s claim that the police have been “incompetent”. Furthermore, we plan to inquire about the Met’s role in investigating hacking by private investigators outside of the newspaper industry, following up on evidence the Committee took from the Serious Organised Crime Agency earlier this week.

The MET Commissioner, Mayor Boris, AC Dick, Weeting, Elveden, Tuleta, the secret Murdoch/Sun recording....

Looks like Tuesday afternoon could be action-packed for Hackgate watchers if HASC only ask the right questions - and get some answers.

Related Articles
Project Riverside And The SOCA Report
All Rise - Justice Saunders At Southwark
The Met - Red Flags And Red Tops
Hackgate - Issues For The Burnton Inquiry Into The Murder Of Daniel Morgan
Hackgate - The IPCC and Surrey's "Collective Amnesia"
Hackgate - Alex Marunchak - Presumed Innocent
Hackgate - Springwatch
Hackgate - Elveden: Murdoch Or King Cnut?

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

Project Riverside And The SOCA Report

The latest from my regular contributor.

Last weekend, the Independent published a genuine scoop - 'The Other Hacking Scandal' (here)

Tom Harper obtained and reported on the full and unredacted version of the 2008 Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) report on 'Project Riverside'. It collated and detailed five investigations uncovering serious illegalities by 'rogue element' private investigators. The Indy's scoop triggered a chain reaction amongst some of Harper's fellow journalists seeking to blame Leveson for keeping them in the dark.

They are outraged - outraged, I tell you - that LJ Leveson failed infinitely to expand the remit given to him by the Prime Minister. Obviously, he should have included corporate, legal and insurance abusers of illegal data harvesting and blagging via dodgy private investigators. Leveson had surely headed a conspiracy to suppress the SOCA report - 'Private Investigators: The Rogue Element of the Private Investigation Industry and Others Unlawfully Trading in Personal Data' (public version here).

The use by corporate and law firm clients of private investigators must have been deliberately suppressed and kept "secret" because no victimised and maligned journalists had ever heard of such things before 2013. The 'powers that be' must have connived for years in the cover-up for fear the press would wield their trusty sword of truth to expose these shocking malpractices. How dare 'they' conspire to keep it all out of the public domain?

Time for police and politicians to get stuck into phone hackers big time, says @TonyParsonsUK http://t.co/ssAkxdLE08
— David Wooding (@DavidWooding) June 29, 2013

Front Page of @HuffPostUK: Why Did Leveson, Politicians & Police Bury the Real Scandal of the 'Other Hacking' Report? http://t.co/R3D1112Iph
— Neil Wallis (@neilwallis1) June 24, 2013

How about a £20 million enquiry into fatcat phone hackers? End the harassment of our free press NOW http://t.co/HAKDEQSLBM via @DailyMirror
— Tony Parsons (@TonyParsonsUK) June 29, 2013

Over the years perhaps the press could have, er.... read some of the media reports?

1997 

Santha Rasaiah of the Newspaper Society sent to the then Director of the PCC, Guy Black, a copy of a 1997 case in which a Rachel Barry, a former private investigator, had been convicted at Harrow Magistrates Court on 28 October 1997 of a total of 12 offences of procuring the disclosure of personal data and of selling the information procured, in contravention of s.5(6) and s.5(7) of the Data Protection Act. The report of the case in the Data Protection Registrar claimed that the clients of Ms Barry had included the proprietors of the News of the World, the People, the Sunday Express and the Mail on Sunday.  (p357 here)

Ah... problematic. It would have been a little difficult to front page splash on the private investigator's corporate, legal and insurance clients without implicating the press too, I guess.

1998-99 

"Corrupt detective selling information to criminals and private detectives" (Guardian, here) .

He was convicted for "obtaining information from the police computer and sabotaging numerous court cases.... (aiding) professional criminals in the south London area to avoid capture and evade charges by providing them with information about police investigations.......the IRA, driving offences, drugs, anything,"
'The information he provided was invaluable,' says Mick, a one-time armed robber...He would be able to tell you what statements the police had obtained, who they had interviewed, which properties were under surveillance, which phones were being tapped - the lot. Worth its weight in gold. You would pay between £5,000 and £10,000 a time, but it was well worth it.'

2002

A news report about illegal data gathering by private investigators for business rivals: "The two-year inquiry unearthed evidence that a police officer had illegally tapped information from a protected database was sparked by a row between two prominent businessmen." (here)

Plus, there were categorically no journalists implicated: "The investigation found no evidence that any media organisation was involved in the obtaining of the data." The chain of private investigators could apparently access information on targets "which could include details of their criminal background, their financial situation, medical history~ telephone records and current whereabouts. The originating customers ranged from individuals involved in matrimonial matters up to multi nationa! financial institutions looking to obtain information in relation to a range of civil matters." (pages 9-10 here)

But that 2002 investigation, Operation Reproof, collapsed before trial so suspects were not convicted - including John BOYALL and Christopher DEWSE.

Wait a minute - those names are familiar. John BOYALL (see here) and Christopher DEWSE (see here).  I think I remember - weren't both implicated in the 2003-4 Operation Motorman investigation into journalists' use of private investigators? (see here)

2006

(WPP?) What Price Privacy? (here) and (WPPN?) What Price Privacy Now? (here)

A substantial amount of the material found in the 2008 SOCA Report (redacted for public, version published 2012) can be found in these two Information Commissioner's Office 2006 reports, including extracts from the notorious 'Blagger's Manual'.

As Operation Motorman begat Operation Glade, it's not surprising that WPP? and the SOCA Project Riverside report concurred on the 5 culprit groups:

2006 WPP? p16

On the demand side, the customers come from the following main groups:

- the media, especially newspapers

- insurance companies

- lenders and creditors, including local authorities chasing council tax arrears 

- parties involved in matrimonial and family disputes

- criminals intent on fraud, or seeking to influence jurors, witnesses or legal personnel.

2008 SOCA Project Riverside Report

The clients of private investigators can be categorised mainly, but not exclusively as follows:

a. domestic – persons seeking to discover activities of their partners, mainly in matrimonial and family proceedings;

b. debt recovery tracing – seeking to discover the locations of debtors;

c. insurance claims – loss adjusters investigating the veracity of claims;

d. media – seeking material for “scoops” about high profile figures;

e. criminal fraternity – the frustration of law enforcement.

The Brown Moses blog addressed the redacted SOCA 'Project Riverside' report here.

WPP? notes that a "private investigator had been engaged by a potentially abusive husband to track down his estranged wife" and "Among the individuals whose privacy had been violated was a woman who had been involved as a vital prosecution witness in a prolonged police enquiry...(which) raised the spectre of possible witness intimidation or harassment."

Yet the accusation remains that the powers-that-be did nothing. Nothing - but only if you don't count the detailing of another 26 prosecutions cited in WPP? for 2002-06. Or several other well-publicised examples since its publication in 2006. Or even after the SOCA report intelligence cut-off date of 30/09/2007.

2006

SHARON and STEPHEN ANDERSON were

used by many City law firms acting for companies engaged in financial disputes or credit checks... the couple's activities can be linked to prominent law firms Arnold & Porter and Mishcon de Reya... and a large US insurance firm.

(source)

2007

HACKERS 'R' US and LIVE TELEPHONE INTERCEPTS

There was this case too - involving the founder of Jimmy Choo shoe empire a and high profile waste disposal business proprietor. (here)

They also had a lucrative sideline involving hacking into people's computers and tapping into their phones... Interception specialist Michael Hall installed hi-tech devices in BT junction boxes and overhead telephone wires to monitor the phone calls of its clients' business rivals or spouses.

This was Operation Barbatus.

2007-09

A SOCA investigation dubbed Operation Millipede resulted in four convictions for offences totally unconnected to the press - another network operating for corporate clients including foreign exchange dealers and property developers. (here)  Some shady private investigation companies are notorious for changing their names though. (see here, 'SOUTHERN INVESTIGATIONS - What's in a Name')

Deliberately obscuring associations, past histories, questionable directorships and so on can be achieved through liberal use of name changes, 'trading as' designations with different bank accounts, and deploying almost (but not quite) identical company names which are distinct legal entities. Just as an example, from Operation Millipede above, one company was said to be owned by convicted MET-detective-turned-private-investigator Adam John SPEARS. By the time of his arrest though SPEARS had ceased to be a director of that company, 'GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICES LTD'.

[And - just in case any powers-that-be are reading - it should be clearly noted that 'GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICES LTD' have absolutely no apparent connection to the coincidentally very, very similarly named company 'GLOBAL INTEL SERVICES LTD' or to its unimplicated directors - Alison and Glenn MULCAIRE.(here)]

Oh.

2012

Channel 4 Dispatches: 'Watching the Detectives'

"Several minutes into their first meeting, the director of Crown Intelligence offers an undercover reporter a broad range of highly sensitive and potentially illegal personal data... An undercover reporter, posing as a risk analysis company representing multinationals, approached private investigators requesting background information on political activists they claimed were targeting clients... A hidden camera monitors STEPHEN ANDERSON leaning across his desk in a plush office near Hyde Park, central London, saying: "I could go through his criminal history, his financial history, bank accounts, loans, medical history." (here)

[ That name seems familiar..? ]

2012

The Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) held evidence sessions on 'Private Investigators'. The Committee was "presented with evidence that links private investigators with serving police officers, in a case that demonstrates the close involvement of investigators with the justice system. GMB described evidence that 'confidential information from police files has been leaked to the Consulting Association (headed by a private investigator)' including notes on people’s presence at demonstrations and records of contacts with the police." (Ev25)

The HASC Report (here) even revealed (Ev82) possible links to the murder of Daniel Morgan: "In response to our follow-up inquiries with Commander Spindler, we received a recall of historic cases known to the Directorate of Professional Standards Intelligence Bureau, including Operation Barbatus, Operation Two Bridges and Operation Abelard." (for more background, see here).  Following the Independent scoop, HASC Chair Keith Vaz has called a new evidence session on Tuesday July 2nd - "Committee to question the Serious Organised Crime Agency on Private Investigators" (here)

All credit to Tom Harper and the Independent - the new HASC session would not be happening without their sound investigative journalism.

The Indy also reported that former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis said:

Until the Independent told me about this, I had not the slightest clue of the scale of illegal information theft going on among our supposedly respectable professions.

Related Articles
All Rise - Justice Saunders At Southwark
The Met - Red Flags And Red Tops
Hackgate - Issues For The Burnton Inquiry Into The Murder Of Daniel Morgan
Hackgate - The IPCC and Surrey's "Collective Amnesia"
Hackgate - Alex Marunchak - Presumed Innocent
Hackgate - Springwatch
Hackgate - Elveden: Murdoch Or King Cnut?
Hackgate - Elveden - Murdoch's Catch 22

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