Hackgate And The Irish Angle

Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency or SOCA, an “élite” policing unit, is under the media microscope once again. Recently I highlighted an article by journalist Pól Ó Lorcáin examining the murky links between the British military and intelligence services, private investigators and the News International hacking/bugging scandal. Now the BBC is shining another light on the seedy underbelly of Britain’s former Long War warriors:

“The agency often described as ‘Britain’s FBI’ is being hauled in front of MPs to address allegations it has not done enough to deal with the threat posed by rogue private investigators who use criminal methods to access private information. So what does the Serious Organised Crime Agency know about the murky world of the private eye?

In January 2008 an internal report was circulated at the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), entitled “The Rogue Element of the Private Investigation Industry and Others Unlawfully Trading in Personal Data”.

This was the product of Project Riverside, a confidential SOCA exercise to analyse five operations aimed at private investigators. The BBC has seen a copy.

Broadly it found that PI firms were illegally ‘blagging’ or hacking information from public bodies, banks and individuals.

They were sometimes working for the media, but also for debt collectors, insurance companies and criminals.

The scams included using technical methods: Devices to intercept phone calls, or planting a “trojan” programme on the target’s computer to obtain their personal information, including their emails.

A recent Metropolitan Police Freedom of Information disclosure reveals 151 victims have come forward.

But this is where the SOCA investigation into rogue private investigators has recently become political.

SOCA’s been accused of “suppressing” the Project Riverside report, and of doing “next to nothing” to disrupt the unlawful trade in private information.

In 2011, the BBC’s Panorama programme revealed one of the conspiracies outlined in Riverside.

Former army intelligence officer Ian Hurst had a trojan placed on his computer in an attempt by the News of the World to read his emails. The paper was trying to find a double-agent who once penetrated the IRA.

The BBC has been told of allegations two other people allegedly had their computers targeted by the hacker involved in the Hurst case.

Ian Hurst believes the Riverside report is critical because it shows SOCA knew about criminality among PI’s but didn’t take action – including to prevent the hacking of his computer.

…the home affairs select committee is now going back to SOCA with the aim of discovering more about what the agency knows, and how it intends to tackle rogue private investigators.”

Naughty-naughty. No wonder the political leaders of British Unionism in Ireland want these law enforcement shysters and their successors given free rein in the northern part of the country. They would be right at home amongst the home-grown PSNI, the paramilitary police force which in recent times seems to have been recaptured by elements of the old, discredited (and effectively disbanded) RUC.

Much (much) more from Brown Moses.