15/10/2014 - NDM Weekly story 8

British police’s use of Ripa powers to snoop on journalists to be reined in

UK government will reform the law to prevent the police using surveillance powers to discover journalistic sources. Simon Hughes - the justice minister has confirmed this is misuse of powers.

He said that the police’s use of powers had been “entirely inappropriate” and in future it would require the authorisation of a judge for police forces to be given approval to access journalists’ phone records, for any criminal investigation.

I believe that it's wrong for phone records of journalists to be accessed, since that's their private life - and it should be asked about if people want to do that. Laws should definitely be put in place in order to protect the privacy of the journalists, there are other ways of finding out information - rather than hacking into phone records.