Bloomberg reporters allegedly used financial terminals to spy on Wall Street

Bloomberg reporters have been keeping tabs on Wall Street using their company’s financial terminals, the New York Post reports. Bloomberg terminals, which cost $20,000 a year or more to lease, are a fixture in the banking world. But according to the Post, Goldman Sachs executives recently discovered that reporters could track when investors were logging into the terminals, as well as what they were doing — from looking at a wire story to using the messaging tool. In one case, a reporter apparently asked a Goldman Sachs executive whether a partner had left the bank, mentioning that he hadn’t been logging into his terminal.

So why were journalists able to get access to terminal information in the first place? Apparently, it’s left over from a 1990s system in which reporters would work with sales teams, something that gave them access to customer relationship management tools. We’ve reached out to Bloomberg for confirmation, but for now, it’s the latest incident to test the line between journalistic investigation and inappropriate surveillance.