News of the World journalists lied to Milly Dowler police

[oldironside]

News of the World journalists who hacked Milly Dowler's phone told a string of lies and interfered with the investigation into her disappearance in 2002, according to a Surrey police report released by a parliamentary committee.

In a month that has already seen the News of the World apologise for hacking three dozen celebrities and crime victims, the Surrey report released on Monday paints an even more graphic picture of tabloid methods. It parallels the evidence revealed at the current Leveson inquiry into press behaviour.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/phone-hacking-news-world-milly-dowler

The sheer bloody arrogance of News International shines through this story. They really thought they were above the law. Maybe at that time they were.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Hacking: Children gave NoW Milly's phone number, say police

A News of the World journalist told Surrey Police it had obtained Milly Dowler's mobile phone number from school friends, police have said.

In a letter to MPs, the force says that in 2002 its officers did not give the newspaper messages from her voicemail.

The claim that the newspaper accessed the then-missing girl's phone is at the heart of the hacking investigation.

The document for MPs does not say why the force did not investigate the paper after learning it had hacked the phone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16682663

[oldironside]

2. Using children?

You can imagine how they would have reacted if they'd found someone else doing that.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Odious

but not illegal. That was discussed in the early days on this subject by legal briefs.

[ikri]

4. It's worth mentioning

It would appear that by listening to the messages the NOTW journalists flagged each message as being old messages and each message was then automatically deleted after so many days.

So whilst they didn't explicitly delete messages so more could be left and listened to as originally suggested they did inadvertently allow the messages to be deleted (IMO the police should have been on to the mobile phone company immediately to ask that they archive all messages).