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UK Court Dismisses Lawsuit Against Journalist Police Wiretapped
from the protection-of-sources dept
An interesting and important ruling came out of the UK last week, as a journalist had a lawsuit against her thrown out by a judge, because it appears that much of the evidence came from police wiretapping her phone conversations with a source in the police department. The judge ruled that journalists have a right to protect their sources, and the police wiretaps were illegal. I'm not familiar enough with UK wiretapping laws to know if they needed a court's approval for the wiretap in the first place -- but on the whole this seems like a reasonable decision, as the case itself was quite troublesome. Basically, it sounded like the police wanted to plug leaks from within the department, and then bugged the journalist to find out who the leaker was, and with that info charged both the source and the journalist. That certainly seems like an abuse of police power to try to prevent future leaks, so it's good to see the court dismiss the whole thing.
Reader Comments
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Jump to Conclusions Mat
Nice way to jump to conclusions. You have no details from the case and have admitted that, but automatically assume the worse.
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Re: Jump to Conclusions Mat
@AC - Did you even RTFA? Personally I came to about the same conclusion as Mike.
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Re: Re: Jump to Conclusions Mat
Did you read any other articles? Wiretapping was not even involved. The guy's car was bugged. Do you take everything that Mike posts as fact? The fact is according to a quote I found on a BBC article the information was legally acquired.
"It is noted that during the legal arguments the judge commented that the methods used to obtain the evidence were lawfully authorised by domestic law and that the actions of the police were proportionate."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7739758.stm
So my point is that Mike automatically jumped to the conclusion that the information was illegally acquired when the case was thrown out for a completely different reason.
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Re: Re: Re: Jump to Conclusions Mat
Oh - they bugged the car - well it's ok then.
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Re: Jump to Conclusions Mat
What do you mean, 'assume the worst'? That's a comment you would need to back up. However, he didn't jump to conclusions. He inferred a possibility gleaned by reading the linked article. Having read the article, myself, I believe his inference is quite close to the actuality of this particular case.
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Re: Jump to Conclusions Mat
I get tired of other Anonymous Cowards ruining our good name with inane personal attacks and completely FAIL at trolling.
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From another AC (because I don't take the time to fill in the other fields) who didn't read the linked article:
I don't know UK law either, so I won't comment on that aspect, but I do agree with the idea behind the result.
The police should work to close leaks in their department. Not just the police, but private business and other government agencies have official means of disseminating information. Except for the whistle blower situations we should respect the fact that these entities have information that they wish to be kept secret until such time as those with authority choose to disseminate it.
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So this seems right, punish the leaker, not the journalist. Journalists should be free to pursue leads.
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FYI
surveillance in UK is regulated by RIPA which says who has permission to do what sort of surveillance. If you want to know more, that's where to start looking.
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