2014 Se og Hør media scandal

This attitude is perceived to have changed with the appointment of Henrik Qvortrup as editor-in-chief, with Ken B. Rasmussen commenting that "we had no ethical standards that had to be upheld as a matter of life and death".

[5] It was initially uncertain how the surveillance was technically accomplished, but the programmer and IT-blogger Poul-Henning Kamp made the educated guess that it involved an existing "trace" facility in the Nets credit card handling system.

[7] It remains unclear whether either of Nets or IBM had a functioning Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system monitoring their credit card infrastructure.

[15] The magazine debated whether credit card transactions detailing the politician Morten Helveg Petersen's travel around Europe by plane, including hotel bookings in Rome, were sufficient grounds for a story.

[27] However, according to Se og Hør journalist Kasper Kopping, the source was further used until the then news manager Lise Bondesen ordered a complete stop in Autumn 2011.

[46] He subsequently demanded anonymity but this was rejected by the judge at Retten i Glostrup with reference to "the circumstances surrounding the charge's severity and the very significant media coverage of, and public interest in, the case about Se og Hør".

[52] Several former Se og Hør employees stated that the magazine had a source at Rigshospitalet that provided information about celebrities' maternity ultrasound scans, including those of Anders Lund Madsen's pregnant partner.

[56] Several then-current and -former Se og Hør employees additionally described how, prior to October 2003, the magazine had plans to purchase bugging and listening equipment.

[58] In 2009, several years before the scandal, the former Se og Hør employee Peter Kaae published his book I sandhedens tjeneste (English: In the service of truth).

This revealed that the magazine had a source at a telecommunications firm, who was used in 1996 for stories about the professional cyclist Bjarne Riis and the handball player Anne Dorthe Tanderup.

These initially included Casper Christensen, the actor Mads Mikkelsen, Iben Hjejle, Pell Hevnegaard, and Rigmor Zobel and her husband Jesper Ravn.

[66] A problem of principle regarding the police's conduct arose when computers, telephones, and other equipment were seized from Aller Media; these could have contained information relevant to the investigation but could also reveal the identities of press sources unrelated to the case.

The seizures were therefore in agreement with both the Retsplejelov [court procedural law] and the European Convention on Human Rights.Copenhagen's Vestegns Politi consequently began searching the material, which filled 13 terabytes.

[76] The police, Nets, and IBM all investigated not just the apparent credit card information leakage to Se og Hør but also whether any further leaks had occurred, especially any involving NemID.

PET's answer via the Ministry of Justice confirmed that tip-offs had been received as early as November 2011 stating that "Se og Hør apparently have access to certain information about celebrities' flights and credit card usage".

[83] The Se og Hør case and various other incidences of problematic personal data protection led to the Folketing's Retsudvalg and Kulturudvalg requiring the government to accept extra binding security responsibilities in June 2014.

[84] The law professional Oluf Jørgensen commented that based on the details published in the media immediately after the breaking of the scandal, he believed that legal "aggravating circumstances" were at play in the case.

[64] This was significant because unless aggravating circumstances could be proven, it would be impossible to prosecute Se og Hør's former chief editor Henrik Qvortrup; having left the magazine in 2008, he was protected by the statute of limitations in the event that he had been sufficiently involved to draw charges.

[97] The case concluded whilst Gottfrid Svartholm was under remand in Denmark, accused of cyber crimes against Danish authorities and companies; at the same time, foreign media continued to report on Edward Snowden's leaks about state surveillance.

[102] Se og Hør's chief editor Nils Pinborg initially defended the rewards[103] but later chose to suspend the system after Jelved's comments.

[105] The independent press regulator decided not to initiate an investigation since they did not consider the revealed details explicit evidence that Se og Hør had used sensitive information.

[106] In a continuation of this announcement, the chief of the Danish Union of Journalists, Mogens Blicher Bjerregård, stated that he personally did not consider "paid sources to have a home in journalism".

The head lawyer at the journalism trade association Danske Medier believed there could be a "potentially huge problem" if many people exercised their right to have their information deleted from the unregistered databases.

[112] The Se og Hør case, together with Gottfrid Svartholm's charges, demonstrated that personal data could apparently be copied form domestic mainframes without Danish IT security professionals noticing; it was respectively journalists and the Swedish police that spotted the problem.

[44] A week after the scandal broke, Edward Snowden wrote a piece for Berlingske that remarked "[t]he Se & Hør allegations are a reminder that until the Folketing takes action to get to the bottom of the mass surveillance problem, our rights are risk".

The paper managed to obtain 2,047 Dankort transactions, 18,047 emails, 313,303 telephonic data (including SMSs and phone logs), flight bookings, tax information, and private pictures.

[123] Danish legal professionals specialising in IT worried that this opened the possibility for American-owned firms operating in Denmark, such as KMD and CSC, to be forced to supply American authorities with Danes' personal data.

[125] The case had several similarities to the earlier and infamous News of the World phone hacking scandal, the latter of which was referred to by the politician Ellen Trane Nørby when commenting on the former.

That scandal broke when the Norwegian Se og Hør-journalist Håvard Melnæs published (in Norway) the book En helt vanlig dag på jobben (English: Just a normal day at the office), in which he revealed that the magazine paid cash to sources at credit card companies and airlines.

[128] In April 2014, another case came to public attention; a well-known 33-year-old DJ from Copenhagen allegedly used a trojan to hack a wide range of celebrities' computers, gaining access to files and webcams.