Reuters accused of hacking
Published: 29 Oct 2002 14:42 GMT
A Swedish company has filed criminal charges against Reuters, claiming that the news agency broke into its Web site to get access to an earnings report.
But Reuters that the information was publicly available on the company's Web site, and said there was "no substance" to the charges.
Intentia International, which makes collaboration software, said on Monday that it has filed charges with Sweden's National Criminal Investigation Department's computer crime division regarding the incident, which took place earlier this month.
Intentia was scheduled to report its third-quarter results on 24 October. But before the company made its formal announcement, Reuters obtained a copy of the press release and put out a news alert.
How Reuters got hold of the release is the subject in question. According to news reports, the report was accessible to anyone who knew the correct address. But Intentia said the report was not linked to through any public means.
Intentia executives said in a statement that its "investigation has shown that there was an unauthorised entry via an IP-address belonging to Reuters."
"The incident has severely damaged confidence in us as individuals and in Intentia as a company," Intentia chief executive Bjorn Algkvist said in a statement. "We question the methods used by Reuters."
Reuters argues that the material was freely available on Intentia's site, for anyone who wanted to look for it.
"This information was not accessed from a private or password-protected site, but from the public Internet," Reuters editor in chief Geert Linnebank said in a statement. "As one of the world's leading news organisations, Reuters is in the business of informing the market with breaking news stories using all the tools at its disposal, but doing so in a legitimate, ethical manner with journalistic integrity," he said.
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