Anthony Gerald Clifford, from Chessington in Surrey, has been
convicted of unlawfully obtaining personal information by
Kingston-upon-Thames Magistrates' Court. He has been ordered to pay
£2,000 towards the cost of prosecution.
Clifford ran a private investigations agency called MRS through
which he obtained and sold on information about individuals. As
well as making calls himself, Clifford also used a woman employee
in order to obtain women's information, and that person has now
been cautioned over her role in the case.
Clifford used social engineering to gain the information, which
meant that he phoned up organisations such as banks and phone
companies pretending to be someone else to get a person's personal
information.
Also known as blagging or as pretexting, the technique is simple
and unusually effective. In the case of HP it was used by
investigators to retrieve the personal phone records of board
members and journalists without their permission.
HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn resigned over the affair and the
firm has just agreed to pay a $16.5m settlement to the Californian
Attorney General's office. It still faces criminal charges.
Clifford is the latest person to face court action over
information theft. Last month News of the World journalist Clive
Goodman and footballer turned investigator Glenn Mulcaire pleaded
guilty to plotting to intercept personal information.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that the
sentence in Clifford's case was more severe than usual, which it
welcomed.
"This is the first time a court has imposed a community sentence
for offences of this type," said Philip Taylor, a solicitor at the
ICO. "The fact that the court has decided to impose a
community sentence rather than a small fine sends out a very clear
signal about the importance of these offences. The bench
highlighted the offences were systematic and planned, causing harm
to the victims.”
The Information Commissioner has made it clear that he wants to
see more severe penalties for people trading in improperly obtained
information. "More than 300 journalists are implicated in this
illegal activity," said a spokesman for the ICO recently. "We have
given them a clear warning that we will not hesitate to take action
if they are suspected in future of committing offences."
