Did Scotland Yard 'hack' Downing Street computers?

Downing Street computers have been forensically examined by police searching for email and other electronic evidence in the cash-for-honours investigation, according to newspaper reports.

The Sunday Telegraph claims to have discovered evidence that police secretly used IT experts to obtain confidential material and also that they approached the government's ISPs to obtain access to Number 10's email records.

The paper reports that the Metropolitan Police obtained high-level authorisation to access Downing Street's computer systems because of fears that information was being withheld when only a "very slim" file of emails, letters and other documents were handed over to police by Number 10 staff.

However, a report in the News of the World claims Downing Street gave detectives permission to send in an independent IT forensics expert to examine computers after police received information from a "mole" about allegedly incriminating emails.

Police are authorised to intercept electronic communications without notifying the subject of the investigation using powers such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - the so-called 'snooping bill' - which provides a legal framework for various methods of electronic surveillance and information gathering by police and other law enforcement agencies.

Scotland Yard told silicon.com it would not comment on the reports.