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."
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:Newscorp isn't in the business of news (Score:2, Interesting)
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:3, Interesting)
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, and publish for public consumption, with little regard for the consequences.
Then we have Rupert Murdoch leaning on the British goverement to hush up the scandel, and corrupt cops deliberately fucking-up investigations.
From wikipedia:
On January 17, 2011, The Guardian reported that Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator paid by the paper, testified that he had been asked by the newspaper's leadership to hack voicemail accounts on its behalf.[20] In April 2011, attorneys for the victims alleged that as many as 7,000 people had their phones hacked by the News of the World[21]; it was further revealed that the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, had attempted to pressure then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Labour Party MPs to "back away" from investigating the scandal.
Absolute.
Fucking.
Scum.
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.
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.
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.
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?