A former Bloomberg employee has revealed that he accessed information on the terminals of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The employee didn't say specifically what he was looking at, but that it concerned usage of specific functions.
May 11, 2013

terminals

A spying scandal involving Bloomberg journalists and the financial news giant's information terminals has reached new heights, CNBC reports.

A former Bloomberg employee told CNBC that he accessed information on the terminals of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The employee didn't say specifically what he was looking at, but that it concerned usage of specific functions.

News of the scandal broke on Friday when it was revealed that Goldman Sachs had complained that employees usage of their terminals were spied on by Bloomberg reporters. Further reports indicated that the spying was more widespread, affecting other companies such as JPMorgan.

Bloomberg News confirmed a breach of ethics and privacy on Friday afternoon. To the financial industry's alarm, Bloomberg journalists have for years been monitoring the company's data terminals -- found in nearly every banking and trading company -- for user activity. They monitored what functions of the service subscribers were using, including corporate bond trades and equities indexes. The dustup came to light after a reporter pointed out to a Goldman Sachs partner that he had not logged into his Bloomberg terminal lately. Oops.

Bloomberg terminals are considered a staple of information in the financial world with over 300,000 customers.

On Saturday, the Federal Reserve announced that it would look into the situation.

Bloomberg CEO Daniel Doctoroff admitted that it was a "mistake" to give journalists access to client data. The company announced Friday that in light of the controversy, journalists would no longer have access to client log-in activity on the terminals.

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