Speaker sends hacking allegations to Police

The Speaker of the House of Representatives has announced he has requested the Commissioner of Police to investigate allegations of hacking of e-mail correspondence, made by Opposition leader Joseph Muscat.

31 October 2011, 12:00am

1 min read

Two weeks ago Opposition leader Joseph Muscat asked the Speaker to investigate the leak of private correspondence between him and a journalist employed with Church radio RTK, claiming the Nationalist media are in possession of a long-term exchange of emails.

Muscat said this was an illegal act of hacking and theft of information, that was now in the possession of PN media.

Speaker Michael Frendo said that since he did not have the tools to investigate such allegations, he was referring the matter to the Commissioner of Police. The matter has already been reported to the police by former RTK acting editor Sabrina Agius.

Frendo said he will take a decision on the matter once he receives a report from the Commissioner of Police on the allegations.

•

What I find surprising in this is that the Police Commissioner should have to be instructed by the Speaker in order to commence an investigation when there appears to have been a very clear prima facie breach of article 337C of the Criminal code which prohibits anyone without authorisation from being in possession of computer data which belongs to another perso. A personal email, irrespective of how it is obtained by a third party, clearly falls into this category.