When a biz journalist’s phone records get seized

With the controversy of the U.S. attorney general seizing phone records of Associated Press reporters, Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times writes about when the phone records of a business journalist who wrote critically about a company were stolen.

Morgenson writes, “The phone records theft took place in July of that year. The matter did not become public, however, until Feb. 1, 2005, when Herb Greenberg, a financial columnist at MarketWatch.com, wrote an article about it. Under the headline ‘Who Broke Into My Phone Records?’ Mr. Greenberg wrote that someone pretending to be him had gained access to his cellphone, business and home phone records. He discovered the theft only after his cellphone provider sent him a letter thanking him for opening an online account he had not applied for.

“The collection of phone records in this manner is known as pretexting. Clearly a violation of privacy, the law was clarified in 2007 to formally make pretexting illegal. In his 2005 article, Mr. Greenberg reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating the matter. He said he had no idea who was responsible, but noted that the break-in to his phone records began six hours after he had published an article critical of Allied Capital.

“Mr. Einhorn was another victim. Two years earlier, at a 2002 charity event for investors, Mr. Einhorn outlined his view that Allied Capital’s stock was headed for a fall because the company had inflated the value of its portfolio.

“Allied responded by attacking Mr. Einhorn and his motives; an eight-year battle between the company and the hedge fund manager began.”

Read more here.