h/t ceebs and BlueStateRedhead for the heads up on this.
From Bloomberg:
U.K. police probing computer hacking and voice-mail interception by News Corp. (NWSA)’s British newspapers arrested two ex-employees suspected in separate conspiracies related to the use of stolen information.
London police investigating computer hacking at News Corp.’s Times newspaper arrested a 28-year-old journalist on suspicion of illegally accessing e-mail and conspiring to “pervert the course of justice,” the Metropolitan Police Service said today in a statement, without identifying him.
In Glasgow, police probing phone hacking at the New York- based company’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid charged former Scotland editor Bob Bird, 56, for allegedly perverting the course of justice in a 2006 defamation trial. In that case, former lawmaker Tommy Sheridan sued the publisher over a story alleging he was involved in a sex scandal.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
From The New Statesman, more on the first arrest, relating to the Nightjack scandal:
Earlier this year, the New Statesman investigated the 2009 outing of the “NightJack” police blogger by the Times newspaper...
Over a sequence of blogposts it was shown that there had been interference with the blogger’s email account and that the High Court had, in effect, been misled.
Today brings the news that there has now been an arrest in respect of the outing. The arrest was at dawn by the Metropolitan Police “Operation Tuleta” team investigating alleged computer hacking by newspapers, and the person arrested is the former Times reporter Patrick Foster. He was arrested for both suspected offences under Computer Misuse Act and suspected conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. (Also see this excellent post at Brown Moses on Operation Tuleta.)
http://www.newstatesman.com/...
A little background on the Nightjack scandal from Wikipedia:
Richard Horton (born 1964) is a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary, and former blogger who lives in Lancashire. He is the author of the Orwell Prize-winning anonymous blog NightJack which commented on his work as a police officer.
In a controversial and landmark decision, Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of Richard Horton. The judge ruled any right of privacy on the part of Horton would be likely to be outweighed by a countervailing public interest in revealing that a particular police officer had been making such contributions.
This gave Patrick Foster, Media Correspondent of The Times, the opportunity to expose Horton's identity in the newspaper, leading to disciplinary procedures against Horton by his superior officers and the forced deletion of his blog.
In 2012, it was revealed that Patrick Foster, then a reporter at The Times, had used computer hacking in order to establish Richard Horton's identity. It was subsequently reported that Horton intends to sue The Times for damages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/..._(blogger)
From AFP, more on the Bob Bird arrest:
LONDON — The former editor of the Scottish edition of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid was arrested on Wednesday and charged in connection with the defamation action of a former lawmaker.
Bob Bird, 56, was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice over Tommy Sheridan's successful legal action against the newspaper in 2006.
Bird was held for questioning at a police station in Glasgow before being released around four hours later.
http://www.google.com/...
h/t glitterscale for finding this juicy paragraph in the Bloomberg article:
“The phone-hacking scandal could be eclipsed by Rupert Murdoch’s unexploded bomb of computer hacking,” Labour Party lawmaker Tom Watson, who sat on a committee probing News Corp., said in an e-mail today. “It’s infecting all his U.K. titles already and the investigation has only really just begun.”