{"id":93443,"date":"2011-12-09T13:45:22","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T13:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=7038"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:28:34","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T12:28:34","slug":"richard-thomas-denies-ico-policy-of-not-investigating-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93443","title":{"rendered":"Richard Thomas denies ICO policy of not investigating journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former Information Commissioner has denied that there was a policy of not investigating journalists\u00a0during Operation Motorman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Testifying at the Leveson Inquiry, Richard Thomas CBE <\/a>said “there was no policy\u00a0from the outset that we were not going to go against the press.”<\/p>\n

He added\u00a0he did not want to “let\u00a0the press off the hook”\u00a0but was advised by the ICO’s legal team that the financial aspect of prosecuting journalists over the use of\u00a0private investigators to obtain personal data\u00a0was too great.<\/p>\n

The ICO’s counsel’s written advice, shown to the Inquiry on Monday,\u00a0stated that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute journalists. Yet both\u00a0he and the Office’s in-house lawyer told Thomas that journalists confronted\u00a0would be\u00a0well-briefed and well-armed, “like a barrel of monkeys”.<\/p>\n

Thomas also denied any recollection of Motorman’s lead\u00a0investigator Alec Owens<\/a> suggesting journalists should be investigated, or of\u00a0former deputy Francis Aldhouse<\/a> saying the press were “too big” to take on.<\/p>\n

On Monday Aldhouse himself denied saying this, negating Owens’s testimony.<\/p>\n

Thomas said he was not involved in any discussion of investigating\u00a0journalists, adding he was unaware of any decision that anyone “actively considering” prosecuting journalists.<\/p>\n

His focus, he said, was the prosecution of private investigators, who he called “the middlemen who were organising the illegal trade”.<\/p>\n

After a series of grilling questions from Robert Jay QC, counsel to\u00a0the Inquiry, Thomas said he took full responsibility for everything that happened, while adding that it was hard to have details of what takes place in a large organisation.<\/p>\n

He repeated\u00a0that he was pleased no journalists were prosecuted, noting that would be “very\u00a0demanding indeed”\u00a0on the ICO. Journalists confronted would have “gone straight to Strasbourg”, he said, had they raised issues\u00a0of\u00a0freedom of expression.<\/p>\n

Thomas told the Inquiry that “prosecution is not the only way to deal with a particular problem”, adding that the 2004\u00a0prosecution of private investigator Steve Whittamore\u00a0produced a “perverse outcome” in his conditional discharge.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the former chairman of the PCC, Christopher Meyer, Thomas had also\u00a0written that\u00a0the body\u00a0could provide “more satisfactory outcomes than legal proceedings” in taking on the issue.<\/p>\n

Discussing the outcomes of Motorman and its findings, Thomas said he could not categorically say all the journalists identified had committed offences. “They were driving the market,” he said.<\/p>\n

When pressed by Jay, Thomas admitted that he could not think of a public interest defence for obtaining the contact\u00a0numbers of friends or family through a private investigator. He added it would indicate a breach of section 55 of the Data Protection Act “at some stage”.<\/p>\n

Follow Index on Censorship\u2019s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter \u2013\u00a0@IndexLeveson.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marta Cooper<\/strong>: Richard Thomas denies ICO policy of not investigating journalists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[3815],"tags":[14359,542,14339,14360],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109298,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93443\/revisions\/109298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}