CSARN (City Security and Resilience Networks) has aired its support for Prime Minister David Cameron’s call for a full national inquiry into allegations of unlawful phone hacking by journalists.
Richard Bingley, Chief Executive Officer of CSARN, the not-for-profit advisers of businesses and high-profile individuals around security, said: "Two years ago, we became the first organisation to run public briefings around risks associated from falling victim to phone-hacking."
"Experts from the intelligence, media and business sectors, within our membership networks, told the UK business community back in 2009 that it was not just high-profile celebrities who are increasingly targeted by some unscrupulous journalists, overseas intelligence services and foreign competitors. Indeed all high-profile individuals and companies in the UK are at risk."
"The accepted levels of hostile media surveillance is far too high in the UK and when you mix that up with the ease of cheaply acquiring phone and computer hacking devices, it really does seem that most MPs have been slow to react on this," said Mr Bingley.
"Regrettably, but not surprisingly, allegations against the News of World, and some other tabloid investigators, working in partnership with a tiny number of unethical private investigators, suggest enduring and endemic corruption and possible criminality. In fact, we have seen for years that lawful British businesses, individuals and their families caught up in the eye of media storms, often through no fault of their own, have been subjected to hostile surveillance and unlawful monitoring of phone messages. "
"We call on this government to begin the work which the last Labour government should have started…and that is to establish a genuinely independent national enquiry into unlawful phone hacking." CSARN adds that itโs offering impartial support and advice around phone and mobile data risks to any high-profile business or individual who may feel at risk.
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Interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on July 6, the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, mentioned the Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO) reports What Price Privacy; and What Price Privacy Now, featured in the January 2007 issue of Professional Security. The ICO then raised what Mr Graham recently called the โmodern scourgeโ of blagging, or โsocial engineeringโ, whereby private investigators, whether acting for solicitors, debt collectors or the media, seek personal information by pretending to be someone else, typically over the phone. This offence falls under section 55 of the Data Protection Act, but the maximum penalty is a fine of up to £5,000 in the magistrates court, and prosecutions are rare, though as the ICO watchdog stresses, the trade in unlawful personal information is profitable.
