The existence of a secretive unit within London’s Metropolitan Police that uses hacking to illegally access the emails of hundreds of political campaigners and journalists has been revealed. At least two of the journalists work for the Guardian .
Green Party representative in the British House of Lords, Jenny Jones, exposed the unit’s existence in an opinion piece in the Guardian. The facts she revealed are based on a letter written to her by a whistleblower.
The letter reveals that through the hacking, Scotland Yard has illegally accessed the email accounts of activists for many years, and this was possible due to help from “counterparts in India.” The letter alleged that the Metropolitan Police had asked police in India to obtain passwords on their behalf—a job that the Indian police subcontracted out to groups of hackers in India.
The Indian hackers sent back the passwords obtained, which were then used illegally by the unit within the Met to gather information from the emails of those targeted.
The letter was published in part in the Guardian, with its anonymous author writing, “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.”
The letter continued, “Over the years, the unit had evolved into an organisation that had little respect for the law, no regard for personal privacy, encouraged highly immoral activity and, I believe, is a disgrace.”
As proof of its validity, the letter contained “a list of ten people and the passwords to their email accounts.” As proof that the hacking was directed against spying on political groups and activists, the letter states that four of the ten people work for the environmental group Greenpeace, with one of them in a senior position.
The Bindmans LLP law firm, acting on behalf of Jones, contacted six of those listed to verify their passwords (the others could not be traced). In response, five of the six gave passwords that matched those given in the letter, and the sixth was nearly a match. The BBC noted that one of the 10 activists said “their password may have still been in use as recently as late 2015 or early 2016.”
The Met has claimed such activities were solely aimed at tracking down criminals, even though any evidence obtained through hacking—which is illegal—would not have been admissible in court. Rather, such claims are a cover for a hidden agenda.
SUBSTRATUMS 
The Met, not the law, but above it!
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