23 March,2017 08:47 AM IST | | Agencies
Scotland Yard is facing allegations of using hackers in India to illegally spy on email accounts of British journalists, environmental campaigners and activists, an anonymous letter to the UK's policing watchdog has claimed
Representation Pic/THINKSTOCK
London: Scotland Yard is facing allegations of using hackers in India to illegally spy on email accounts of British journalists, environmental campaigners and activists, an anonymous letter to the UK's policing watchdog has claimed.
The letter, believed to be from a whistleblower, alleges that a secretive unit at the Metropolitan Police used contacts in the Indian police to obtain passwords and monitored targets for several years. The UK's Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)has launched an investi gation after the letter containing passwords for email accounts belonging to four Greenpeace campaigners as well as journalists and photographers was sent to Baroness Jenny Jones, former leader of the Green Party.
"For a number of years, the unit had been illegally accessing the email accounts of activists. This has largely been accomplished because of the contact that one of the officers had developed with counterparts in India who in turn were using hackers to obtain email passwords," an extract of the letter published in 'The Guardian' reads. The newspaper, which employs two of the reporters named in the letter, has confirmed that most of the passwords were correct.
