After months of hearing witnesses came a million-plus-word report at the end of November. To recap, Prime Minister David Cameron announced the inquiry into the role of the press and police in the News of the World (NoTW) phone-hacking scandal, in July 2011. Lord Justice Leveson was chairman and looked into the culture, practices and ethics of the media; and the relationship of the press with the public, police and politicians. Here are some points of interest to – and about – the private security industry.
You can read the full 1987-page report or a digest at www.levesoninquiry.org.uk. Then visit – http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc1213/hc07/0779/0779.pdf
On hacking, Leveson said that ‘phone hacking in itself, even if it were only in one title, would justify a reconsideration of the corporate governance surrounding the way in which newspapers operate and the regulatory regime that is required. Without making findings against anyone individually, the evidence drives me to conclude that this was far more than a covert, secret activity, known to nobody save one or two practitioners of the ‘dark arts’. Yet it was illegal.’
“No newspaper sought to discover (let alone expose) whether its journalists had complied with data protection legislation. Some titles promptly forbad the further use of private detectives for data searching; many took some time to take that step and others did not do so at all.” Leveson spoke of a culture (or sub-culture) in the press that was not embarrassed about intrusion into privacy by hacking phones: “No national title mounted a campaign about the slack security surrounding mobile phone messages.”
When Clive Goodman, a journalist employed by the News of the World and Glenn Mulcaire, a private detective, were convicted of hacking into the telephone messages of members of the Royal Household and others, it was implicit during the course of the criminal prosecution that others must have been involved, whether knowingly or not, in using information that was the product of phone hacking. Most responsible corporate entities would be appalled that employees were or could be involved in the commission of crime in order to further their business. Not so at the News of the World. When the police had sought to execute a warrant, they were confronted and driven off by the staff at the newspaper.
Towards the end of the 1987 pages, readable online in four chunks, Leveson covered press-police relations, and avoiding corruption. He called for more arrangements for police whistle-blowers. For junior officers, Leveson concluded that it would be wrong to place restrictions, for example in the form of a ‘cooling off’ period, on police officers and staff below ACPO rank leaving the police, perhaps to return to a career in the media. Any restrictions would clearly have to be balanced against the right of any individual to seek employment as and where he or she wishes. Leveson suggested that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary should identify one of its members, ‘a former Chief Constable, as the designated point of contact for confidential ethics guidance. The Chief Officer seeking and obtaining that advice would be able to refer to it should any issue subsequently arise on a complaint to a Professional Standards Department, a Police and Crime Commissioner, or indeed the IPCC itself. The advice would not be determinative of the complaint, but the fact that it was sought and received, as well as its content, would be a matter to be taken into account’. And in the IPCC, the police complaints body, ‘there is a need for an enhanced ‘filter system’ whereby the nature of complaints are appropriately addressed at an early stage so that (a) they can be investigated at the right level, and (b) sufficient structures are put in place to maintain confidentiality of the complaint, and differentiate as soon as is appropriate between genuine whistle-blowers and those who are merely ventilating a personal grievance’.
As for data protection, Leveson went into how the regulator the ICO (Office of the Information Commissioner) brought out reports in 2006 on blagging and a trade in illegally and unethically gained data, titled What Price Privacy? Leveson wrote: “In the perennial struggle to get data protection (and, thus, the ICO) taken seriously, whether by regulated business, by the public, by the courts, by politicians, or by the press, the ICO quite understandably needed to make a public example of the Motorman [police op into blagging and hacking at the News of the World] find. The outcome of the Whittamore prosecution could be thought to reveal that the wider objective had been set back and that failure was in turn symptomatic of the lack of seriousness with which the courts seemed to consider data protection. The sentence maxima contributed to that lack of seriousness, and were in turn a sign of a lack of legislative seriousness: a failure at the political level to take data protection seriously. The s55 campaign was to that extent a test of political commitment, and as such existential for the ICO.”
As Leveson noted, the ICO has sought to publicise and strengthen the penalties in the Data Protection Act for what Leveson termed ‘an extensive illegal market in personal information’, although as Leveson noted the data watchdog can since April 2010 give ‘civil penalties’ – fines, for bodies, usually so far public, that are guilty of failings in protecting data. The data protection regime, was Leveson added, was designed to protect people from the press (like others) ‘employing unscrupulous external agents to obtain confidential personal information about other people. Further, that information is provided without their knowledge or consent and obtained by unlawful means whether by deceit, corruption, or the exploitation of technology.’ Leveson did make the point that ‘it was a market in which the press were the dominant power, commissioning bespoke products from what must be assumed to be a limited number of investigators willing to obtain them at some risk to themselves’.
As Leveson wrote, his inquiry was ‘sparked by public revulsion about a single action – the hacking of the mobile phone of a murdered teenager [Milly Dowler]. From that beginning, the scope of the inquiry was expanded to cover the culture, practices and ethics of the press in its relations with the public, with the police, with politicians and, as to the police and politicians, the conduct of each’.
Had Mr Mulcaire [the convicted blagger hired by the News of the World] been less assiduous with record keeping, what has now been uncovered would have remained unknown, Leveson pointed out. “Suffice to say that in the absence of a complaint, luck, or, for the most serious crime, intelligence-led policing, possible offending of this type will not be detected.”
Leveson said that he was struck by the evidence of journalists who felt that they might be put under pressure to do things that were unethical or against the code. “I therefore suggest that the new independent self-regulatory body should establish a whistle-blowing hotline and encourage its members to ensure that journalists’ contracts include a conscience clause protecting them if they refuse.”
