Journalists under surveillance

Thursday 22 January Australian federal police are being asked to track the sources of stories questioning the way boats full of asylum seekers are being treated, the Guardian reports.
Paul Farrell of Guardian Australia writes that at least eight stories have been referred to the police by the country's customs chief because he suspects that they were based on classified material.
Farrell quotes one letter as saying: “I would be grateful if your agency would accept the responsibility for investigating this matter with a view to identification and, if appropriate, prosecution of the persons responsible.”
The stories, published by the Guardian, the West Australian and news.com.au,  relate to Scott Morrison's time as immigration minister after the election of the coalition government in September 2013. 
Morrison immediately imposed tighter restrictions on asylum seekers and within weeks the Australian authorities stood accused of being too slow to respond to distress calls from a boat that went down off Indonesia, killing at least 30 people. The following week the Sri Lankan navy had to rescue 70 people from a fishing trawler found drifting in high seas.  
See Farrell's report and links to the referrals and commentary here 

1,700 mobile records checked 'in error'

Vodafone sim card
Wednesday 26 November Almost every News International journalist with a company mobile phone between 2005 and 2007 will have had records of the calls they made scrutinised by Metropolitan Police working on Operation Elveden. 
The Times's crime editor Sean O'Neill reports today that Vodafone handed records relating to 1,757 phones to the police, who were seeking information under RIPA about a single reporter's calls. The phones had been used by journalists, lawyers, secretarial staff and senior executives.
When Vodafone realised the error, it asked for the records to be returned and later wrote to the Met expressing concern that it continued to retain them. 
The records were sent to the police in October last year, but it was not until police analysts burnt the material on to a CD in March that they noted that they had "excess material". Three months later, after reviewing the data and making a spreadsheet, the force contacted the Information Commissioner to make an error report. In the meantime it had, according to the Times, returned to the material to find out information about five more journalists, lawyers and sources.
Read the original article here and Roy Greenslade's view here

Six challenge Met's 'extremist' database
Saturday 22 November 
The Metropolitan Police holds 2,000 records on journalists and photographers, according to The Times, and now the NUJ has started legal proceedings to stop officers gathering information on people not suspected of breaking the law.
The union is acting on behalf of six members, including Jules Mattsson of the Times, who received an apology and compensation from the force three years ago after being detained while trying to photograph a military parade. He was 15 at the time.
Mattson writes in Press Gazette about how he has been under surveillance and on the details being held on the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit database.
Read more on the legal challenge here.
America
Monday 8 September  Press freedom campaigners are urging President Obama to ban surveillance of journalists and the hacking of their computers. The Committee to Protect Journalists is circulating a "right to report" petition in response to revelations that the NSA had been spying on reporters and Al-Jazeera.  It says the disclosures raise unsettling questions about whether Western democracies risk undermining journalists’ ability to report in the digital age.
"They also give ammunition to repressive governments seeking to tighten restrictions on media and the Internet."
You can see examples from the CPJ here
Australia
Friday 26 September New security laws that could lead to ten-year jail terms for journalists who publish information from whistleblowers have been denounced as an outrageous attack on press freedom.
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance says that journalists who interview "persons of interest" to the security services could be put under surveillance, investigated and punished - undermining their ability to protect sources.
The union's federal secretary Christopher Warren said: "This Bill criminalises legitimate journalist reporting of matters in the public interest."
Read the union's full statement here
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