Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

[friendly_iconoclast]

Source: Guardian (UK)



Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

Nick Davies guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 July 2009 17.33 BST


Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

Today, the Guardian reveals details of the suppressed evidence which may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them.

The evidence also poses difficult questions for:

• Conservative leader David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts....


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/08/murdoch-papers-phone-hacking

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Wonder what Fox in the US has been up to, hmm?

[pattmarty]

1. Oh, you know they are fair and balanced, right????

[Demeter]

2. Fox Just Cranks Up the Volume on Their Pet Cranks

Fox doesn't actually report anything. They just make it up as they go along. It's the piercing volume that does it.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Wonder why this isn't on Sludge's site?

:shrug:

:think:

[CJCRANE]

4. So Murdoch's journalists are basically acting like spies

and criminals?

:shrug:

[DCKit]

5. Sweet. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch - of criminals.

But wait a minute, didn't a gang with the same exact credentials recently exit the WH?

If everybody's doing it, is it still illegal?

[mogster]

6. So when is this guy gonna get it?

:shrug:

Can he do exactly what he wants, or what?

[T_i_B]

7. Well, given his influence over UK politics

It's understandable if people fear that they might get off the hook. Far too many people in British politics are afraid of the Murdoch press.

I must admit that I tend not to use The Times as a source on DU very often. The reason for that is that I've posted links to that paper before now and had other DUers blow massive holes in the shoddy reporting. The was especially so during the 2004 primaries.

[formercia]

8. How they did it:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=331665&mesg_id=331665

More than likely.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. No, that's very unlikely; it's the voicemail that they accessed

What's described in your link requires the victim to visit a dodgy website using the phone, which then installs malware on the phone to get it to transmit sound from the room even when you think it's off, etc. It's aimed at random people.

What happened here was targeted hacking into specific people's voicemail accounts, and other similar accessing of private information - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/08/murdoch-newspapers-phone-hacking :

According to one source with direct knowledge of the Scotland Yard evidence, News of the World journalists were systematically using private investigators who would break the law to obtain information, hacking into thousands of mobile phones and supplying raw material which was then converted into stories that made no reference to their real source. Against that – and in apparent contradiction of the evidence supplied and suppressed in Taylor's case – senior News International executives have publicly claimed that Goodman was the only person at the News of the World who was involved in hacking, and that he acted without their knowledge.
...
In suppressing Taylor's legal action, News Group buried not only the Scotland Yard evidence but also paperwork that had been seized by the Information Commission from a Hampshire private investigator, Steve Whittamore, who had been running a network of sources who specialised in the illegal extraction of information from police computers, British Telecom, the DVLA, Inland Revenue and others. Whittamore subsequently pleaded guilty to criminal offences, although the newspapers who hired him were never prosecuted.

Although the Information Commission has since said that almost all of this activity was "certainly or very probably" illegal under the Data Protection Act, the paperwork shows no sign of secrecy at all as 27 different journalists from the News of the World and four from the Sun ordered more than a thousand searches. One News of the World reporter made 130 requests. Another made 118. One news executive is recorded as directly commissioning 90 actions by Whittamore. This included 23 illegal searches of the DVLA for the details behind car number plates; two illegal searches of police databases for criminal records; five illegal searches of phone company records to convert a mobile number into a private address; and three requests for illegal access to records of ex-directory phone numbers.

Another news executive is recorded commissioning 70 more actions including nine illegal searches of British Telecom records to convert landline phone numbers into addresses, 13 illegal searches at the DVLA and two illegal accesses to criminal records from police computers. A very senior executive of the paper is recorded directly commissioning illegal access to records from a mobile phone company.

[formercia]

10. I disagree

"News of the World journalists were systematically using private investigators who would break the law to obtain information, hacking into thousands of mobile phones and supplying raw material which was then converted into stories that made no reference to their real source."

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Exactly - they hacked into specific phones

they didn't wait for their targets to be gullible and bored enough to visit random websites.

Read the articles - this isn't about getting audio of the targets' surroundings; it's about getting voicemail.

[Crowman1979]

12. Bumping this one up!

Everyone needs to know.

[Blue_Tires]

13. major kick

[T_i_B]

14. Three inquiries launched into News of the World hacking claims

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/09/phone-hacking-inquiries

News International was facing three fresh inquiries into the conduct of its journalists and executives following the Guardian's disclosures that Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire paid £1m to keep secret the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, announced he was intending to launch an urgent review of the evidence relating to phone hacking gathered in the investigation of the News of the World reporter Clive Goodman, who was jailed for obtaining information illegally.

A powerful Commons select committee said it would be calling senior managers from News International to give evidence as early as next week to clarify what they knew about malpractice by journalists at the News of the World. Andy Coulson, the former editor of the paper and now the Conservative party's director of communications, will be asked to appear. He has always denied he knew reporters working for him had hacked into the mobile phones of politicians and celebrities.

The Press Complaints Commission also announced it was conducting an inquiry. At Westminster, senior Labour figures continued to call for Coulson to resign and the prime minister said that there were "serious questions" to answer.

[LeftishBrit]

15. kick and unfortunately too late to recommend!

Oh the wonders of the British press!