(IPYS/IFEX) – On 22 May 2006, several journalists denounced the fact that unknown persons had hacked into their e-mail accounts and distributed lists of the e-mail passwords of at least 20 reporters. The accusation comes only a few days after the surreptitious monitoring and private information theft from the e-mail account of “Clarín” journalist Daniel […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – On 22 May 2006, several journalists denounced the fact that unknown persons had hacked into their e-mail accounts and distributed lists of the e-mail passwords of at least 20 reporters. The accusation comes only a few days after the surreptitious monitoring and private information theft from the e-mail account of “Clarín” journalist Daniel Santoro was made public. The information in this case was about an off-the-record conversation he had with a judge regarding a drug-related case (see IFEX alert of 12 May 2006).
Some of the affected journalists confirmed the authenticity of the published passwords. Luis Majul, presenter of the TV program “La Cornisa”, reported during his program that his Yahoo! account had been broken into. Ernesto Tenembaum, political columnist for Radio Mitre, made a similar announcement during his own program. He added that some colleagues, officials and former officials whose addresses appear in his Hotmail account received messages, including regarding conversations he had had with other people.
In an interview with Tenembaum, Alberto Fernández, the chief of staff of the Cabinet, pointed out that he does not believe that the State Intelligence Department (SIDE) is involved, although he did not rule out that the espionage could have been the work of former members of that department.
Although the surreptitious monitoring of e-mail is not yet classed as a crime in the Argentinean Penal Code, several judges compare it to the crime of violating the privacy of written correspondence. This motivated the members of the Argentinean Journalism Forum (FOPEA) to demand before the judiciary and the government that the perpetrators be identified.
