Hack the Dog 3 – Content

It risked becoming old news until Sabrina Agius asked the police to investigate the possibility of computer misuse (and yes, the Times is at it again so we know it is lawyers Emmanuel Mallia and Arthur Azzopardi who are representing Miss Agius – like that is of any public interest at all). SabrinaGate is still the fashion and tonight’s appearance of Joseph Muscat on an interestingly scripted Bondi+ will continue to fan the flames of discussion.

I watched the recording of Bondi+ programme after having watched the much more interesting happenings at the Juventus Stadium. Following the successful conclusion of the match, my host – who happens to be one of the key figures of the saga switched to the recording of Bondi’s latest attempt at investigative journalism. It was an interesting set up of a program based on the general idea of “your wrongs should make this right” – BWSC, Censu Galea and other instances of leaks being used to draw Joseph’s attention to the general sense of “Cosi Fan Tutti” that probably really does pervade our journalistic estate.

Having stomached Bondi’s rehash of the BBCNEWS get-up and colours I turned to discussing the matter with my host – you will by now have guessed that it was my cousin Nathaniel a.k.a. Mr Attard head of Net News. Nathaniel and I manage to disagree on a hundred different matters while remaining generally civil towards each other at the end of every conversation (luckily we agree on matters that count like supporting the black and whites till death do us part). This was not to be one conversation without a disagreement. My biggest issue was with the PN/NET spin or slant that seems to imply that Joseph Muscat is actively planting journalists in the so-called “independent media”.

Joseph Muscat is to planting as Chlorofluorocarbons are to a better climate.  I’ve been wanting to write this third part of the Hack the Dog series for quite some time now and here it is : what does the content teach us? It shows us that  Joseph Muscat is lacking (to put it mildly) in the wise department. Tonight on Bondiplus he tried to pull it off as a sense of decency – “il-Labur ma jindahalx fuq x’jaghmlu gurnalisti”. Rubbish. He had a fawning acolyte who corresponded with him in swooning terms and making herself fully available to his needs. “Uzani kif trid” – the phrase is self-explanatory in all its pornographic lack of subtlety.

Joseph did not actively seek out plants in other media. This correspondence shows a potential plant falling out of thin air and Joseph acts ever so weakly throughout the conversation. It is evident that he loves the attention, he plays along with the considerations of power made by the openly ambitious journalist who shifts from being an “inside hack” to “potential cabinet material” within a few emails. It’s embarrassing in that sense. Not in the sense of the plant – or to put it less directly in the sense of the attempt to establish a line of communication within “enemy lines”. Plants or semi-plants or “lines of communication” are constantly being built or destroyed on either side of the political fence and anyone in the game who denies it must be a very bad liar.

No. It is embarrassing because a Prime Minister to be seems to communicate in the same manner as a teenager playing some strategy video game. I can understand Joseph Muscat’s sense of panic when he hooked on to the fact that his private power flirtations (nothing sexual – we don’t really care about that anyway) would soon be there for all to see. He had to build a bigger more sensational bit of news that would hopefully make the monster go away – hence the hacking and spying bull.

Is the content in the public interest? Well. It’s neither here nor there. Maybe, just maybe this nation is pathetic enough not to know the truth about the dealings and power games played out by our journalistic and political castes. Then it would be in the public interest to publish the correspondence to make people aware of what considerations go on behind the scenes.

We now have the news that Sabrina Agius has gone off to opportune the police with the idea of computer misuse. Here’s my hunch – and I am prepared to swear the following on oath (and it has nothing to do with my being related to a party to the case) – the police will have considerable difficulty in finding out who violated the actual provision of the criminal code relating to computer misuse. Without the original crime of computer misuse (and hence without the virtual “theft”) there can be no questions relating to the handling of information that is not proven to have been unlawfully obtained in the first place. Remember the onus probandi.

Then again, even if there IS finally a culprit to be found the next step – what has been described as handling of stolen goods in a virtual sense is a bit more difficult to prove. Why? Because the “content” of an “email” is not defined at any point in the law. This is not copyright or plagiarism. What exactly are the stolen goods received? In the case of computer misuse the crime is the misuse of the computer and accessing of accounts. The crime might extend to the downloading of data. But does our criminal code, or any other law for that matters, cover the handling of such data once it is put into circulation?

To conclude my hunch is that there is a dangerous lacuna in our law that might point to glaring inconsistencies when defending the right to privacy. I don’t really think that Joseph Muscat is worried about that right now though. I think he is worried that he is being made to look like a totally incompetent dork by the leaked content of his correspondence. And even in today’s modern world… it might turn out to be rather useless to shoot the messenger.