Bloomberg reports on a controversy in the UK.

Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and Sun newspapers face separate investigations by London police and U.K. lawmakers over claims they obtained personal information through illegal means.

The Metropolitan Police will look into the allegations, Commissioner Paul Stephenson said in a statement today. Thirty- one journalists working for the tabloid newspapers acquired private information through “blagging,” or underhand means, the U.K.’s Information Commission said.

The Guardian reported yesterday that Murdoch’s News Corp. paid more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to settle lawsuits claiming journalists used private investigators who illegally hacked into mobile phones of politicians, sports stars and entertainers. The report throws a spotlight on the news- gathering methods of the competitive U.K. newspaper industry.

“If things came to a head and there was enough political interest in this,” the newspapers and individual journalists could face criminal charges for breaching data privacy laws, said Nick Graham, the head of the information and privacy practice at Denton Wilde Sapte LLP in London.

There’s much more, so read the full story.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 and is filed under Anonymity, Identification, International, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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