News Corp. Subsidiary Under Fire For Hacking Dead Girl's Voicemail 251
Hugh Pickens writes "Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. came under pressure from UK Prime Minister David Cameron to respond to 'really appalling' allegations that its News of the World tabloid hacked into the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. The tabloid printed a story based on a voicemail left on Dowler's mobile phone on April 14, 2002, when she had been missing from her home in Surrey, southwest of London, for more than three weeks. According to a Guardian newspaper report, a private detective working for the tabloid gained access to Milly Dowler's phone messages after she was abducted in March 2002 and the detective, Glenn Mulcaire, is alleged to have deleted voicemail messages on Dowler's phone, giving her parents 'false hope' she might still be alive and thereby complicating the police investigation. According to one source, when her friends and family discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Dowler herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive."
But why? (Score:2)
In all the articles I've read on this, it's never explained why they did it. It's obvious that when they hack phones belonging to celebrities they're looking for scandal dirt. What did they expect to dig up on a little dead girl?
Re:But why? (Score:5, Informative)
Allegedly the investigator did it so that the voicemail wouldn't run out of space. As in they'd heard the ones on the phone, but wanted to ensure that they could hear new ones coming in.
Re:But why? (Score:5, Informative)
Because she was still missing at the time. They wanted the scoop. Bunch of sick fucks, deleting messages and giving the parents hope their kid is still alive (it's not the only time they've done this too).
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If they had removed and destroyed mail addressed to anyone involved in a case they would definitely be guilty of tampering with evidence and interfering with a legal investigation. A "good" lawyer might even get them for willingly perverting the cause of justice.
Re:But why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But why? (Score:4, Insightful)
its worth pointing out that the police in Britain are tangled up in this mess - they were paid off handsomely by the 'journalists' involved and it is fairly clear they were very much embroiled in this business.
also, our prime minister is a personal friend of the newspaper editor that was responsible for a lot of the hacking, including the incidents where the murdered girl had messages deleted from her phone and false hope given to her family.
david cameron also hired Andy Coulson (under criminal investigation for his part in phone hacking) as communications director.
this scandal goes all the way to the top and anyone who thinks that the truth will fully emerge must be deluded - it's actually pretty hard to believe the depths to which Britain has sunk.
the british media have always been fairly unpleasant and disreputable but the facts of this case are quite incredible - you could hardly make them up.
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perhaps you could point out where i suggested that cameron would instigate a cover-up...
why on earth would he need to?
e.g. in spite of the criminal and immoral activities that news international engages in, it seems that they are getting a very clear thumbs up from the government in their efforts to take over a british tv channel! after all, the ceo of news int in the uk is the exact person responsible for hacking into the phone of a murdered teenage girl, interfering with the criminal investigation, giving
Re:But why? (Score:5, Informative)
The News of the World Hacking Scandal is a big thing in the UK at the moment. It has now emerged that they hacked the phones of two other murdered girls, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, who were murdered by Ian Huntley; and the police are now looking at many other child murder cases.
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I think the Wells/Chapman case is going to be the biggest problem for News of The World because it was phone evidence that was used by the police to eventually determine that they never left the vicinity of the school - the murderer didn't switch off the phones, instead leaving them to run out of battery. The police enquiry was quite confused at this time and I am now wondering whether, armed with the geoloc data from the phones cell phone signal (pinpointing them both together near the school) and the voi
Sue NewsCorp for hacking / terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
under the new draconian anti-hacking laws, some of which have been classified as 'terrorism', perhaps NewsCorp could be declared a terrorist organization.
im referring to the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, some of which paragraphs now qualify under 'terrorism' and RICO law.
maybe the UK has something similar - they used terror law to go after Iceland when the banks busted.
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... Bunch of sick fucks, deleting messages and giving the parents hope their kid is still alive (it's not the only time they've done this too).
Boycott the paper! But I don't suppose the readership will.
It should be remembered that the reason the phone hacking was so prevalent was because The Public likes to read the salacious stories the technique can grub up, like rummaging through the bins, and what The Public wants The Public gets ... NotW were only providing what their readers wanted!
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It should be remembered that the reason the phone hacking was so prevalent was because The Public likes to read the salacious stories the technique can grub up, like rummaging through the bins, and what The Public wants The Public gets ... NotW were only providing what their readers wanted!
THIS. The trail leads right back to the readers of the newspaper. People treat the NotW as a laugh, a bit of a giggle, but this is the consequence. I hope the readership acknowleges this and a mass boycott of the NI papers results. The best punishment of all has to be Rupert Murdoch's bottom line.
Re:But why? (Score:4, Informative)
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What did they expect to dig up on a little dead girl?
Something that would give News Corp the "exclusive" edge.
It's a similar mentality to paparazzi who try to snap and sell photos of celebrities in private situations. It's appalling but it's something that news companies will use to rouse more attention.
Newscorp isn't in the business of news (Score:5, Informative)
It's a long article, but is really worth a read. It talks about Ailes and his plans for what would be Fox News. It uses primary sources, and goes into some depth about an interesting bit of history. Murdoch may not have come up with the idea, but he sure has done well with the execution.
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News Corp owns many news outlets. While I agree many of them are tabloids and not hard journalism, not all qualify for the tabloid label. The WSJ is still an excellent source of business news, even if its opinion pages are most definitely conservative. And, let's be honest, most all news outlets are owned by media companies that are selling entertainment. Witness the Casey Anthony trial as Exhibit A.
Re:Newscorp isn't in the business of news (Score:5, Informative)
. While I agree many of them are tabloids and not hard journalism, not all qualify for the tabloid label. The WSJ is still an excellent source of business news, even if its opinion pages are most definitely conservative.
The WSJ was acquired relatively recently [cnn.com] (in comparison to GP comment link), and is slowly approaching the foxnews event horizon from which facts, if they ever escape, are heavily red-shifted.
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I think the specific targets are meaningless in the context of the scope. Between 7,000 & 9,000 phone are reported to have been tapped/intercepted.
I want to know the technique used. Was an automatic dialler used, trying common PINS or something less/more sophisticated? And how can one defend against it.
To those that frown at us who demand the right to encryption for personal privacy; please shut the fuck up.
Any message intercepted is likely to be taken out of context, possibly embellished by the paper,
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Murdoch may not have come up with the idea, but he sure has done well with the execution.
Huzzah! I nominate both Ailes and Murdoch for the Joseph Goebbels award.
Re:Newscorp isn't in the business of news (Score:5, Informative)
You mean there's a single source of news without a political agenda ? Which one ?
Too bad for them they didn't just hack a republican's email address, that would have brought them heaps of praise.
There is a world of difference between having a political agenda and deliberately lying and distorting the news. In the first, you describe things from your own biased point of view. In the latter, you actually make shit up. It's like the difference between a witness in court that tells a story from his/her own particular viewpoint and a witness that actually commits perjury. Most news sources are like the witnesses telling their accounts from their own viewpoints. Fox "News", on the other hand, is the perjurer.
Re:Newscorp isn't in the business of news (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/jun/22/jon-stewarts-politifact-segment-annotated-edition/ [politifact.com]
Jon Stewart merely listed them - politifact actually did the fact checking.
Re:Newscorp isn't in the business of news (Score:4, Interesting)
Google "fox news court case lying".
The went to court and argued that they have a right to lie.
And won the case.
That's what "Freedom of Speech" means to them.
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Until the citizens of this country stop pulling the lever at the booth for one side or the other nothing will change
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/actual-news-headlines-vs-fox-news-headlines [buzzfeed.com]
This is an article that takes headlines produced by non-fox-news organizations and compares them to the headlines that Fox News decided to use. You can definitely see the bias in just their headlines.
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T
Re:Newscorp isn't in the business of news (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2002, Columbia School of Journalism studied how various news sources handled titles and signifiers. For example, if somebody was described as a retired Major, Columbia checked to see if both they were commissioned and made rank, and if they had enough time in to count as retired. If somebody was described as a psychiatrist, did they really have the full MD related degree, or were they maybe a psychologist instead. Sources that got titles and related right got higher scores. For this study, Columbia ignored everything else, just this one measure of accuracy, one that has few or no subjective components. NPR and the BBC both did pretty well, about 4.0 on a 1 to 5 scale. Incidentally, PRI did a bit worse than NPR, at about 3.2, which also put it about on par with the Christian Science Monitor. MSNBC, CBS News, the New York Times, and such all fell about in the middle of the pack - with the Times doing a little better than the Washington Post, but all scoring pretty close to 2.5. Fox and Al-Jazeera tied for last place at 1.2.
There've been other studies, from Columbia on other subjects, one from MIT on information science related reporting, one from somebody I don't recall offhand on whether the news source attributes famous quotations correctly, and various other types, and Fox invariably does no better than average, usually much worse. The titles study stuck in memory because once the study's authors decided how to count a few things (i.e. Is calling the assistant dean of women's studies at Stanford just "Dean So and So" in the scrolling bit at the bottom a hit or a miss?), there wasn't a lot of room for errors and political biases.
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All UK tabloids have done this (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a particularly disgusting example of a very common practice within UK tabloid newspapers. I wish we could single out the News of the World but in fact the tabloids in general have all been up to it.
The interesting thing here is that Rebekah Brooks, who currently heads up News International in the UK, was editor of the News of the World when the phone was hacked and she is on record as saying she knew about phone hacking from back then. It is pretty likely (despite her protestations) that she knew what was going on - editors do - and it will be interesting to see how News Corp react to this with respect to her. She is one of Rupert Murdoch's favourites and all along they have been protecting her but we'll see what happens now.
Re:All UK tabloids have done this (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question shouldn't be if News Corp is a fit owner of BSkyB, but if Cameron's government is fit to preside over any aspect of Murdoch's takeover bid.
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As for Rebekah Brooks, it'd appear that politicians and others have great fear of her. I can't re-collect exactly what a member of parliament said about her, but it was along the lines "you investigate my newspaper and i'll come after you." What a vile woman, almost gagnster creepy. And those are the people Murdoch employs?
Re:All UK tabloids have done this (Score:5, Insightful)
Also interesting is that the senior policeman in charge of the original investigation (Andy Hayman) found only a 'handful' of victims, and was asked by parliament to reinvestigate the case. He replied *the same day* that after reinvestigation that no evidence of more victims was found.
We now know that the Met police in fact had evidence of a large number of victims.
Hayman left the force and - by mere coincidence - got a job as a columnist at the Times: another News Corp paper.
Still, not to worry: he was replaced as the investigator in the case by John Yates, who also appeared to misled parliament by claiming that there were only 8 - 12 victims when must have had evidence of many more.
By mere coincidence, senior Met officers dined 13 times [wordpress.com] with News Corp executives during the short period of the original investigation. Yates himself dined with the News of the World's editor Colin Myler during the 2009 investigation when Myler should almost certainly have been considered a suspect.
Rebekah Wade admitted to a Commons Select Committee that her paper had paid police for information in the past. The Met police refused to investigate [wordpress.com] this clear admission of a crime.
News Corp org structure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News Corp org structure (Score:5, Insightful)
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The difference would be whether you are seeking the information to try to help stop corruption at high levels, or just to get a few more un-educated readers to buy your rag, specifically at the expense of the loved ones.
Not even comparable circumstances.
The idea that you think they are, I find a little scary.
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no, no one else but you, because you're confusing the exposition of information with the deletion/tampering of information. In fact, when Wikileaks started editing the information they released, people on Slashdot clearly developed a change of heart towards them, realizing that they became just as biased as the journalists they derided.
Re:News Corp org structure (Score:5, Insightful)
The previous leaks didn't delete the source information after distributing it. These guys recorded the phone messages then deleted them, potentially interfering with a police investigation and causing the family to believe their daughter had deleted the messages so must have still been alive. See the difference?
Re:News Corp org structure (Score:4, Insightful)
Advertiser boycott in progress (Score:5, Informative)
The way to deal effectively with this is to take out the advertisers. A boycott is in progress and is getting results.
* News Of The World advertisers list [google.com] - includes handy Excel spreadsheet, suitable for mailmerging
* Addresses and phone numbers of advertisers [wordpress.com]
So far, Ford have withdrawn their advertising from NOTW, and Mumsnet have removed their advertising from Sky. The latter will hurt, as that's advertisers considering all of News International too toxic to deal with.
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And the best bit is that this sort of a campaign really wouldn't look out of place in the News of the World.
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Not that it's a bad thing in this case, but too often, getting advertisers to pull is the modern censorship. Get enough advertisers to pull out and they'll have to get rid of the show, right?
I wish this earth would just go ahead and spontaneously combust. It'll save billions of lives' worth of suffering and pain.
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It will just mean slimier advertisers will move in.
I doubt they will be paying as much as Ford did.
Confusion... (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary says the investigator deleted the voicemail messages. In the news report I saw, the allegation is that the NotW journalists deleted the messages.
(alleged) chain of events is:
1. NotW hires investigator to gain access to voicemail
2. NotW listens to voicemail to get soundbites from loved ones for their shitty, amoral rag.
3. Once voicemail is full, they delete stored messages so they can get more juicy copy from distraught friends and relatives of a murdered 13-year old girl
4. They then interview parents of said girl, the mother speaking about the hope that her daughter is still alive based on the deleted voicemails.
Do not try to excuse this. The people doing this are pitiless psychopaths.
Some more context here: (Score:2)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/30/news-corporation-powerful-media
This cancerous organisation has just made a deal with the government it is deep in the pockets of, to extend its media monopoly in the UK - this scandal is unlikely to reverse that decision, given how personally close News International is to the Conservative Party:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk_general_election_2010#Endorsements
Right-wing fools! (Score:3)
For all of the right-wing clowns here who are saying that it is unfair to brand Fox News and the other "fine" Murdoch properties with the tar coming from this story, I have one response: If you buy properties that lie down with dogs and don't clean them up, you shouldn't be surprised when the fleas hop onto you. God knows Rupert's had time to change this paper's editorial policies if he didn't approve of them - he's owned it since 1969.
Fleas! (Score:2)
It's like Ross Perot and George W got together and decided to have an aphorism contest...
The editor in question is a friend of the PM (Score:3)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/04/david-cameron-dinner-rebekah-brooks-mystery
We are a perfectly corrupt society.
Bit of background (Score:5, Informative)
This might be the straw that's very likely going to break the camel's back, but it's been a long running story now. Back in 2005 they were rumbled for hacking into voicemail of aides to the royal family, a good article from a US source, the NYT, here [nytimes.com]. The tl;dr version of that article is a minor uproar ensues but Newscorp contains it and is more or less successful claiming it as a one-off, rouge scenario, offering up the resignation of Andy Coulson, the editor, though he claims not to have known anything about it of course.
Now Andy Coulson makes the mistake of getting a job - head of communications, think Toby Ziegler in the West Wing - in the Conservatives, who get into government. This, combined with statements made by the private investigator who's decided he's not going down alone, adds enough fuel to get the fire burning again. The Guardian and Channel 4 get digging and out comes a documentary. A handful of celebrities are sniffing around it now, lo and behold Hugh Grant throws gas on the fire by bugging the bugger [newstatesman.com]. All is forgiven Hugh, well played.
Accusations just keep mounting up and the picture is forming pretty solidly of a newsroom where such things were par for the course. An oft-repeated point directed at Coulson I'll paraphrase as "either he knew and he broke the law, or he didn't and he's grossly negligent" (not sure who started that, I think Ian Hislop [wikipedia.org]). Coulson is given the boot.
The shit is flying pretty thick now and it just keeps coming. But it's all the royals, celebs and politicians. There is a sense that whilst it's overstepping the mark considerably, these are all public people and fair game. Milly Dowler, on the other hand, was a child and a tragedy. This is a recent turn in events and very quickly major advertisers have started to step away. I'll applaud Ford for being the first of the big advertisers to drop them, though I'm quite surprised it took so long. I suspect more shuffled away quietly.
News is now coming in [guardian.co.uk] that the police investigating the phone hacking have contacted the parents of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the girls killed by the Soham Murderer. This was one of the biggest stories and national tragedies I can remember.
The News of the World really must not be allowed to survive this, it is a stunning failure of ethics, governance and plain decency on a huge scale with substantial evidence. If they can't be brought down for this, they clearly cannot be taken down for anything. Yet it's even proving difficult to remove the editor.
bigger than the Iraq war? (Score:2)
because, uhm, a couple hundred thousand people died in that one.
did anyone 'hack' and 'phones' about that 'tragedy'?
scumbags (Score:2)
round them all up and give them all the harshest penalty under law
Mastercard and Visa (Score:4, Interesting)
Why isn't Mastercard and Visa REFUSING to accept "subscriptions" to this paper? Why hasn't THEIR Paypal account been frozen?
See how it's one set of rules for common people and another set of rules for Big Business?
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... when even the tabloid itself probably frowned on what one individual did.
"The tabloid" doesn't frown, it just fucks people up and rakes in the proceeds. There's no way the high-ups didn't know this was going on.
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Not OP, but I agree that it's ridiculous to mention News Corp. and especially Rupert Murdoch. The only motivation I see for doing so is out of dislike. When ESPN does something, you don't say "A Disney subsidiary . . ." Rupert didn't do this, and no one from News Corp. (outside of the tabloid) had anything to do with it either.
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The only motivation I see for doing so is out of dislike.
It's as though you're trying to make that sound like it's a bad thing.
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Well, it's the sort of thing the tabloids would do...
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Helloooo!!! You're on /.?
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It is a bad thing when you try to frame discussions around that dislike.
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Not OP, but I agree that it's ridiculous to mention News Corp. and especially Rupert Murdoch. The only motivation I see for doing so is out of dislike. When ESPN does something, you don't say "A Disney subsidiary . . ." Rupert didn't do this, and no one from News Corp. (outside of the tabloid) had anything to do with it either.
If those higher up in the group did not know what was going on then they should have or should at least take action against those who should have told them and those who should have not done it in the first place.
Perhaps when ESPN does something we should say "a Disnet subsidiary..." - that way umbrella groups might start taking in interest in what their underlings are doing instead of ignoring it until it becomes publicly noticed, defending them until it becomes painfully obvious there is no "reasonable
media organizations are different from... (Score:3)
other organizations.
the head of a media company will often be involved in piddly little bullshit , like how the CEO of NBC was involved in the Conan O'Brien thing.
Bill Keller of the NYTimes was directly involved in the Wikileaks debates.
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"even the tabloid itself probably frowned on what one individual did"
As you put it: Really?
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I think it was fair. In any news organization, ethics generally come from the top down. As Murdoch and his corporation are both ethically bankrupt, we can expect the individual media outlets he owns to be ethically bankrupt.
Or, put another way, if it were only this ONE tabloid in his whole operation that was busy making a mockery of journalism, it'd be one thing. But every one of his properties is encouraged, by the head office, to view "journalistic ethics" as a curious anachronism best left dead and burie
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His citation is other people spewing the exact same comment any time Fox News is mentioned. They never have any evidence aside from a few mistakes (which all news organizations have) blown way out of proportion. Often Fox News will be vindicated, but these vindications are never publicized by Rachel Maddow, which seems to be the only show these people watch.
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Ask the people of Liverpool [guardian.co.uk] where a tragedy where nearly 100 people died was used as the backdrop for some horrendous lies about the people there trying to rescue the injured and dying. There are so many other examples of low ethical standards from this rag and its stablemate the News of the World that it really doesn't take too much digging to find plenty of examples. I have never watched Fox News but if its journalists are of the same ilk as those on the Sun and the News of the World then I'm not surpri
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This discussions is a prime example of the arguments presented against Fox News. "OMG FAUX NEWS!" "What's wrong with them?" "You are such a tool"
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Here's a good example of why people say that about Fox: Fox News Finally Admits There Are No Death Panels [politicususa.com]. And it's hardly the only example of them flat out making up shit to put on the air in their never ending war against liberalism.
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Try clicking the link. It includes video directly from Fox News. They did not make this up.
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http://video.foxnews.com/v/4475823/death-panel-deception [foxnews.com]
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4475253/death-panel-comeback [foxnews.com]
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4313344/first-sign-of-death-panels [foxnews.com]
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/beck-has-happy-fearmongering-session [crooksandliars.com]
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ac3_1251310849 [liveleak.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSI4RTWRTxo [youtube.com]
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4475784/return-of-death-panels/?playlist_id=87937 [foxnews.com]
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201101020001 [mediamatters.org]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbzoGZTelU [youtube.com]
http://mediamatter [mediamatters.org]
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P.S. Anti-Fox News speak always sounds so much more entertaining when you picture it being spouted by an arrogant Frenchman smoking a cigarette.
I just tried it. You're correct.
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
1. The editor of the paper at the time is now NIs most senior person in the UK.
2. The voicemail messages were deleted by NotW journalists, NOT by the investigator who initially gained access to the voicemail.
Don't try and let NI off the hook for this (even if you are an astroturfer working for them).
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Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. . . .
Is that really necessary? I know there's a serious anti-Fox News crowd here, but it's quite a stretch to include the entire organization when even the tabloid itself probably frowned on what one individual did.
The tabloid itself is only now frowning on what one person did because it had been made public. Before then they were perfectly happy to ignore the behaviour completely and make what money they could by raking as much as they could from any resulting scoop.
"one bad apple" argument is tired and stale (Score:5, Insightful)
the modern organization has everything timed, measured, and decided on down to when you take a shit.
the 'one bad apple defense' has been repeatedly proven to be
1. a classic tactic of modern organizations to insulate themselves from responsibility
2. very often based on utter lies
It was used by the government to act like Abu Grahib was an accident, when it was the direct result of a wide spread policy to approve of and promote 'harsh interrogation' and get rid of the culture that respected Geneva and LOAC
It was used by the government to act like My Lai was an isolated event. In reality, the Army itself collected and documented several other incidents that were similar to My Lai, and hid them in a box on a shelf for decades until they were discovered by journalists and researchers.
It is used by bank CEOs to try to act like they had no idea what their CDO trading desks were doing. Utter nonsense. They had people screaming at them about what was happening - those people got fired because they were hurting short-term profits and presented political risks to the executives.
and on and on and on
the 'one bad apple' theory has been proven time and time again to be utter lies in the modern corporate organization.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
If you knew anything about this story, which has been running since 2006, you'd know that it isn't about the actions of one individual; it's about a culture of using illegal techniques to obtain access to private information that has been rife at the News of the World (NotW) for years.
Rebekah Brooks, editor of the NotW at the time Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked, accidentally admitted to a House of Commons committee a few years ago that the paper bribed police officers for information, though she later claimed that she didn't know the details of specific instances. As knowing the specifics would have left her open to prosecution, we can form an opinion of the merits of her claims of ignorance of what those she employed and directly supervised were doing on a regular basis.
Two people, one a NotW editor and the other a private investigator employed by the NotW, have served prison sentences for hacking the voicemail messages of members of the royal household.
The voicemail messages of senior politicians, including the former Deputy Prime Minister, and of senior military officers have been hacked, and this has been admitted by News International.
So far, News International has paid out more than £2million in out-of-court settlements, and it is believed they may have to pay as much as £40million to deal with all the claims against them by individuals whose privacy has been invaded.
This isn't the actions of one individual: it is a corporate policy of deliberate illegality for the sake of profit.
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Re:Let's Put This In Perspective (Score:5, Informative)
One reporter and the private investigator have already gone to prison for this: I think wrong-doing has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt by convictions in a criminal court.
In addition News International have setup up a ~£20million fund to pay compensation to those who they have admitted they hacked. I think wrong-doing have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt by a confession and an apology.
What is up for debate here is exactly how evil and corrupt they are - it has been proved that they are evil and corrupt already.
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Okay answer this. To access the voicemail the "hacker" would have needed to know her phone number. How on earth would a newspaper get such information unless volunteered?
It's likely they paid a bent cop or a friend for the information. That's not exactly good is it?
It doesn't matter how good the passcode is, the fact is they obtained the phone number with a view to trying to gain access to personal information. Even if the passcode was 0000 they still had no legal right to be accessing the voicemail, not to
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You don't think a private investigator would be able to attain that kind of information independent of the tabloid? If not, what's the point of a private investigator? I'm not saying the tabloid didn't do anything wrong (especially if they published the information, knowing how it was attained), but your argument doesn't make sense. The main point of the GP, however, was the ridiculous line drawn all the way to News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch.
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ALL tabloids (grimy little nosy bastards, all of them) pay people for information.
Paying people for information is not morally wrong, in general. For example you could offer a reward for information about the girl's whereabouts, which would be fine. Paying people to get personal information about the girl in a way which interferes with a police investigation - that's obviously wrong.
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The Free Dictionary states: [thefreedictionary.com] To gain access to (a computer file or network) illegally or without authorization A message stored in a voicemail system is a file stored on a computer somewhere and they gained access without permission.
So what's your definition? Is it because they used such an easy to use password it's not hacking? Does that then mean brute force or the use of a dictionary or simply trying the most common passwords is
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I may be old fashioned here, but maybe they got the phone number out of the phone book? Or if that doesn't work, just phone up information from the telephone company. Phone numbers aren't exactly well hidden and private.
Re:Let's Put This In Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Are News International paying you for this?
The allegations are of full collusion between NotW and the PI - specifically that although the PI may have gained access to the voicemail, it was News International journalists who deleted messages from it (i.e. tampering with evidence in a murder investigation). Trying to blame some rogue investigator is utter bullshit.
Re:Let's Put This In Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Aww, come on! Do you really believe that? NOTW are also accused of a whole string of similar hacks on royalty and celebrity phones. One such incident they can explain away, but all of them? Especially because they have a well-deserved reputation for other dirty tricks.
And no, Rupert Murdoch didn't personally hack those phones. Osama Bin Laden also didn't personally fly one of those airplanes. Still, OBL was considered a mass murderer. Rupert Murdoch is no mass murderer, but he IS a ruthless psychopath.
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For the most part I agree with you on the jumping to conclusions part, for example the idea that the editors deliberately deleted voicemails to keep the story alive. We can't know that for sure.
But having printed stories based on the contents of the girl's voicemail, the editors had to have at least been aware that the PI was accessing the voicemail account. This makes them responsible for tampering with potential evidence. Their subsequent use of PIs to illegally access celebrity voicemail accounts shows
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This is not the only criminal offence [bbc.co.uk], just the worst (so far)
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Is it hacking when you guess the passcode? 1-2-3-4?
Yes. If someone steals your care because you left the keys in while you went back in the house and grabbed something it's still theft.
In the US at least if you hire a PI for something you are responsible for anything they do that is illegal.
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Is it hacking when you guess the passcode? 1-2-3-4?
Yes. If someone steals your care because you left the keys in while you went back in the house and grabbed something it's still theft.
It could diminish the charge from premeditated to opportunistic though, but yes it's still theft even if you are an idiot for leaving the keys in the car (which could be a crime in itself depending on where you live)
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Why is FAUX News an insult? Surely since they report Fair & Balanced news, it would be a big compliment - a nick name for being fair and balanced.
If organisations keep appearing in a bad light and there is a common link, do you not think the common link should be mentioned?
P.S. You, dear sir are the first to use the term "FAUX NEWS" TM !!!
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Rupert Murdoch didn't personally hold anybody at gunpoint demanding a passcode. News Corp didn't send Nazi Zombies after her family demanding information. But I can already tell from the headline that some people will just go there right off the bat. I'm all for charging the PI with obstruction of justice, but unless News Corp explicitly told him what to do, their involvement in this is tangential at best.
The profits make their way up, why not responsibility?
Re:Let's Put This In Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you remove yourself from the equation with money -- just like a mafia don does when he hires a hitman -- doesn't mean you get a pass when they correctly interpret your winks and nods, even if you escape the legal ramifications on technical grounds. As Nick Fel and pmc point out, the participation of people within NotW seems to have been already proven in a court of law.
In a larger perspective, this perfectly supports the theory that News Corp doesn't give a shit about news, but it pretends to for money. Take the American side of his empire, for instance. Roger Ailes founded Fox to push his political agenda, and Murdoch bankrolled it because he thought it would make money. That's not a conspiracy. That's just a common sense understanding of known facts. The idea that a Nixon aide and a capitalist would lie and cheat and hire people of questionable character to achieve their objectives shouldn't surprise anyone at all.
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Whoah, hold on a minute.
A News Corp subsidiary that happens to be a tabloid (which as we all know don't count as real journalism)
The subsidiary in question is News International. They run the biggest selling papers in the UK including The Times, which has one of the most respected newspapers here for centuries.
hired a private investigator to complete his own investigation on the murder of a girl
No they (presumably a team at the News of The World) hired a man to investigate the disappearance of a girl. This is quite an important distinction, they knew the types of technique liable to be used, it would be quite a different kettle of fish doing this once it had become a murder investigation.
The private investigator, acting as a lone agent, "hacked in" ... to her voicemail and used a message on it to add to his investigation.
They (
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