Press officer behind Liberals' computer scandal

The 24 year old employee of the Young Liberals who admitted to gaining unauthorized access to the Social Democrats' internal computer network was the organisation's press officer, Per Jodenius, it has emerged.

• 'Many Liberals knew about election spying' (5 Apr 07)
• Liberal spying investigation complete (26 Oct 06)
• Liberal party secretary resigns (5 Sep 06)

"We now confirm that it is him," said the Liberal Party's chief of staff, Helena Durssen, to TT on Monday afternoon.

Jodenius is 24 years old and lives in Stockholm. He is an elected representative in the party and in 2004 was a candidate for the European parliament.

According to the report made to the police by the Social Democrats, the computer company Sentor discovered that three user accounts were used to log in to the system when the real account holders were clearly not logged in.

One of the account holders had access to all the secret information about party strategy and election planning. This account was access from an IP address owned by an IT company linked to the Liberal Party.

In the police report it was also stated that there was a failed attempt from the same IP address to access the Social Democrats' internal system.

Per Jodenius admitted on Monday that he had used private log in details to access the Social Democrats' system. But according to the newspaper Expressen, those details were supplied by a Social Democrat Youth worker in Skaraborg.

Jodenius has been fired from his role in the party and a technical investigation has been launched by the Liberals.

The leader of the Liberal Party, Lars Leijonborg, denied that the party leadership had known anything of the unauthorized access to the Social Democrats' system, or that the information had been used the party's advantage.

He said he was only informed of the matter on Sunday evening.

"We take what has happened very seriously," said Leijonborg at a press conference on Monday.

"I can only express regret that a party colleague has done something so ill-judged."

Leijonborg said that he had tried to contact prime minister Göran Persson to apologise, without success.

Leijonborg strongly attacked the Social Democrats when it was revealed that a senior party official had sent anonymous hate mail to the leader of the Moderates, Fredrik Reinfeldt, calling that a "low water mark".

"This is also a real low point," said Leijonborg.

Prosecutor Maria Häljebo from the City prosecution office in Stockholm will lead the investigation into the affair.

"Various people will now be questioned and there will be a number of house raids to check computer logs," she said.

Häljebo added that the case would prioritised since it is linked to the approaching election. But she did not say how long the investigation would take.

Jodenius claims that he stopped using the log in details in March, because it was playing on his conscience, according to a press release. He said that he had acted on his own initiative and that only he had had access to the log in details.

But the Social Democrats' treasurer Tommy Ohlström stated at an overnight press conference that the latest access happened only last week.

The 24 year old was said to be able to see secret information about Social Democrat strategies, plans for the election campaign and information from the security police.

"Our computer systems have been illegally accessed. It was widescale, systematic and has been going on for a long time," said party treasurer Tommy Ohlström, at an overnight press conference.

Johan Jakobsson said he had no idea what the political consequences could be.

"First and foremost, we're focused on establishing all the facts."

The Social Democrats' treasurer Tommy Ohlström stated that between January and March of this year, the party's computer systems were illegally accessed 78 times.