THE WORK of a Northern Ireland human rights body has been compromised by computer hacking allegedly carried out for the News of the Worldagainst a former British army intelligence officer, the Leveson inquiry has been told.
Sensitive documents shared by the British-Irish Rights Watch, headed by Jane Winter, with the ex-intelligence officer Ian Hurst, better known by his pseudonym Martin Ingrams, were captured in the hacking, Ms Winter told the inquiry. Fearing that people may be discouraged from contacting the respected human rights body, she said it was not clear to her that the hacking was part of efforts by the now-defunct tabloid to gather information for news stories.
“Therefore, the possibility of the hacking having another purpose rather than simply gathering news stories must be contemplated and investigated,” she said in a written statement to the inquiry into standards and ethics in the British press.
The hacking, she said, was particularly chilling for an organisation such as British-Irish Rights Watch handling confidential documents: “Unauthorised access to that material has the potential to compromise both official investigations and the safety of individuals, including myself,” she told the inquiry. “From the point of view of my organisation, we really rely on trust and confidentiality and we deal with people from all sides of a very difficult situation in Northern Ireland. My first thought was if all the people we help hear about this, they will lose confidence in us through no fault of our own and that is a very chilling thought.”
In his evidence, Mr Hurst, who served with the British army's Intelligence Corps and Force Research Unit between 1980 and 1991, said he was told by BBC's Panoramaprogramme last December that his computer had been hacked using a Trojan virus.
Eventually, Mr Hurst secretly videotaped a meeting with a man, who admitted he had hacked Mr Hurst’s PC on behalf of the News of the World – which was trying to gather information about the alleged IRA informer Freddie Scappaticci, better known by his codename “Stakeknife”.
"Even though the police were aware that my computer had been hacked as long ago as 2007 they did not inform me until October of this year," said Mr Hurst, who alleged that senior British officers had known about, but turned a blind eye towards, the News of the World's conduct.
“I strongly feel that the matter was swept under the carpet and if the hacking had been fully investigated by the police when it first came to light further illegal information gathering would not have occurred,” he said.