The Guardian has pressed the Metropolitan police to disclose if the emails of its reporters and photographers have been illegally accessed by a secretive Scotland Yard unit.



The demand follows disclosures last week that the Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating allegations that the unit had used hackers to access the private emails of hundreds of political campaigners, journalists and press photographers.

Among them are alleged to be at least two working for the Guardian, whose names have not been identified.

However, the Met has declined to answer any of the media group’s questions, saying it would not be appropriate to do so while the allegations were being investigated by the IPCC. The Met acknowledged that the allegations were “clearly serious and of significant concern”.

In a letter to the Met on Thursday, Gill Phillips, the Guardian’s legal director, asked when did Scotland Yard become aware of these allegations and what steps it had taken to investigate them.



She also asked the Met to provide the names of the Guardian reporters, and on what dates they were monitored, along with any evidence it holds relating to the alleged intrusion.

She wrote: “Any interference by the state or its officials with the legitimate activities of journalists raises serious issues, and erodes and undermines the rights and freedoms of journalists encapsulated by article 10 of the European convention on human rights and recognised and enforced by the European court of human rights through its judgments. All the more so, if that interference is covert and unlawful.”

A letter blowing the whistle on alleged police hacking shows we’re all at risk | Jenny Jones Read more

Fiona Taylor, temporary assistant commissioner at the Met, wrote back the same day, saying: “The allegations that you refer to are clearly serious and of significant concern to the Metropolitan police. However, these matters are the subject of an independent investigation by the IPCC and in these circumstances it would not be appropriate for us to offer any response to the questions that you raise.”

In a letter to the IPCC, the Guardian has asked when the watchdog first became aware of the allegations and whether it knew the identities of the reporters whose emails were allegedly accessed. Phillips has also asked if the IPCC knew whether other Guardian journalists had been monitored.

Last week, it was disclosed that the IPCC had begun an investigation into allegations that had been outlined in a letter to the Green party peer Jenny Jones by an anonymous individual who said he or she worked for the covert police unit.

The individual said the unit worked with Indian police, who in turn used hackers to illegally obtain the passwords for the email accounts of activists and the media.

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The letter said the monitoring included the “email accounts of radical journalists who reported on activist protests (as well as sympathetic photographers) including at least two employed by the Guardian newspaper”. None were named in the letter.

The letter provided the names of 10 campaigners, alongside passwords for their email accounts.

Lawyers at Bindmans, which is representing Jones, approached six of the campaigners and asked them to volunteer their passwords. Five gave the exact password, and a sixth gave one that was almost the same.

The national domestic extremism and disorder intelligence unit has monitored the political activities of thousands of political activists in recent years, but has been criticised for snooping on law-abiding protesters.



• If you would like to pass on information in confidence, you can send a message via the Guardian’s SecureDrop service (see how here).