Times facing police investigation over alleged email hacking

The Times is facing a police investigation over claims that it hacked the email of an anonymous blogger in order to expose his identity.

The investigation comes as a response to a letter to Met police from Labour MP Tom Watson, who called on the force to look into a 2009 story by former Times media reporter Patrick Foster that exposed the identity of the police blogger NightJack.

Watson, a member of the culture, media, and sport select committee that has investigated phone hacking, said on Twitter yesterday that the Met had "confirmed to me they are investigating @rupertmurdoch's newspaper The Times over email hacking".

A Met police spokesperson confirmed today that officers from its computer hacking investigation Operation Tuleta were in contact with Watson.

"We can confirm that a letter was received on Monday 23 January from MP Tom Watson.

"Officers from Operation Tuleta are in contact with Watson in relation to the specific issues that he wishes to raise. We are not prepared to give a running commentary on the Operation Tuleta investigation."

James Harding, the editor of the Times, confirmed in a letter to the Leveson inquiry that Foster had been disciplined in 2009 for gaining unauthorised access to the email account of Lancashire police detective Richard Horton, the anonymous author of the NightJack blog.

Harding told the inquiry: "When the reporter informed his managers that, in the course of his investigation, he had on his own initiative sought unauthorised access to an email account, he was told that if he wanted to pursue the story he had to use legitimate means to do so."

When Horton sought an injunction to prevent publication, the Times was forced to defended the newsgathering behind the story at the high court.

Harding told the inquiry in his letter that Foster had identified Horton "using his own sources and information publicly available on the internet".

"On that basis we made the case in the high court that the newspaper should be allowed to publish in the public interest. After the judge ruled that we could publish in the public interest, we did."

Mr Justice Eady, who denied Horton an injunction, agreed that Foster "had been able to arrive at the identification by a process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information available on the Internet".

Watson alleged in his letter to the Met that Foster had "used the illegally gathered information to identify the name of a serving police", and said it was "clear that a crime has been committed".

Operation Tuleta has made one arrest so far. A 52-year-old man was arrested in November on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act.

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