Information Industry–Reuters
Source: AP/ITWorld.Com
Criminal Complaint Filed Against Reuters
From the article, “Swedish information technology company Intentia International AB has filed a criminal complaint against Reuters Ltd. alleging that the U.K.-based news agency illegally obtained Intentia’s third quarter financial results by hacking the company’s corporate Web server. Reuters has denied the charge, according to a published report…”We are rejecting (Intentia’s) allegations completely. Information was accessed from company’s Web site and in the public domain. It wasn’t a private site. It wasn’t password protected. (The report) was on their public Internet site; it was published, and therefore we reported it,” said company spokeswoman Susan Allsop…Allsop confirmed that no link to the report was provided on the Intentia Web site. Citing the legal actions taken against the company, however, she refused to say how the file was located on the site. “The journalist located it on their site, but not using any illegal means. The journalist didn’t hack into their system. The report was on their site in an area where you would expect it to be. Anybody looking for it at that site would have found it,” Allsop said. The issue may come down to a dispute over what constitutes “private” content on a Web server that is accessible to the public. If the earnings report was posted ahead of time in a location that was accessible to the public and where previous quarterly earnings statements had been posted, a knowledgeable Web user could derive the URL (uniform resource locator) of the file and download it, even if no visible link to the file was provided on Intentia’s Web site.”
See Also: Intertia News Release #1 ||| #2
See Also: Read the Complete Reuters News Release

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