News reporter Rhodri Phillips arrested at 6.30am by Scotland Yard detectives at his home in north London
A journalist at the Sun has been arrested in north London by police from Scotland Yard's Operation Tuleta, which is investigating breaches of privacy including computer hacking.
He is understood to be Rhodri Phillips, a news reporter at the paper.
The Metropolitan police said the man was held at his home at 6.30am on Thursday, but did not give his age or any detail of offences the man is suspected of committing.
News International chief executive Tom Mockridge confirmed in an email to staff that he was "afraid that another of our journalists from the Sun has been arrested this morning".
Scotland Yard is expected to provide further detail of the arrest later on Thursday.
The force said in a statement: "For operational reasons we are not providing further details of this arrest at this time but will release more information in due course."
Sources at News International said the arrest may have been linked to an incident last year when Philips worked as night reporter when a reader phoned in claiming to have found a mobile phone on a train they believed belonged to an MP.
Scotland Yard said in a statement officers from Operation Tuleta were investigating criminal breaches of privacy alongside their phone-hacking inquiries.
The Met police refused to elaborate on the actual offence the individual was arrested on suspicion of or give further details.
Colleagues on the paper are furious about the arrest and say the paper has been handed information and lost items "since 1969" when Murdoch bought the title.
"If we have to stop taking calls like this and checking out the information that is being put to us, we might as well pack up and go home," said one journalist on the paper. "This is just getting ridiculous."
The move has reawakened the anger in the Sun newsroom felt in February when Trevor Kavanagh, the paper's associate editor, said there was "a feeling of being under siege" after five Sun journalists were arrested – and bailed – in relation to Scotland Yard's Operation Elveden investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to public officials for stories. "The witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on free press," he said.
Phillips is the seventh person to be held by the Metropolitan police under Operation Tuleta, which was launched in July last year as a splinter investigation to the probe into phone hacking.
The Met has 19 officers working on Operation Tuleta, compared with 96 officers officers and civilian personnel on Operation Weeting and 70 on Operation Elveden, the investigation into payments by journalists to police and public officials.
Scotland Yard described the Tuleta probe as "an investigation into a number of allegations referring to breaches of privacy which fall outside the remit of Operation Weeting. This includes computer hacking."
Operation Tuleta is investigating the use of so-called "trojan" emails which allow a hacker to take over a target's computer.
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