News Of The World Hacked Phones Of 9/11 Victims
Last week we discussed the phone hacking scandal from the Murdoch-run tabloid The News Of The World. Since last week things have been unraveling very fast. In the middle of last week, Murdoch announced that NOTW would run its last edition on Sunday. Almost 200 people were put out of work. A former editor of the paper, who was David Cameron’s aide, was arrested and may face jail time. The paper’s editor at the time, Rebekah Brooks, still has her job. Things are about to get worse for Murdoch because it’s now being reported that NOTW hacked the phones of 9/11 victims.
A source said: ‘This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’ private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their relatives.
‘His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look.
‘The investigator said the journalists seemed particularly interested in getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.’
The News of the World was shut after 11,000 documents seized from a private investigator revealed the ugly truth behind many of its scoops.
One police source said: ‘These documents show the hacking was not just one or two attempts at accessing voicemails. More than 4,000 people had their phone hacked. This was hacking on an industrial scale.’
This could get really ugly. Will it effect the rest of Murdoch’s empire, like Fox News? One of the editors of NOTW during this period is now with the Wall Street Journal. I think it’s clear now that there was a culture at NOTW that let this behavior flourish.
Just for kicks, check out this 2009 column from News of the World denying that they had hacked thousands of phones and accusing The Guardian of shoddy journalism.
So let us be clear. Neither the police, nor our own internal investigations, has found any evidence to support allegations that News of the World journalists have accessed voicemails of any individuals.
Nor instructed private investigators or other third parties to access voicemails of any individual.
Nor found that there was any systemic corporate illegality by any executive to suppress evidence to the contrary.
If the police, or ourselves, had uncovered such evidence, charges would have been brought.
…
The News of the World has a long and distinguished tradition. But we also accept that there have been times in our 165-year history when, like the rest of the media, we have made mistakes.
When we have done so, we have admitted to them.
No newspaper, least of all the Guardian, is perfect. Nor is our craft a perfect science.
Its practitioners are human. They misbehave and make mistakes for which they – rightly – pay a heavy price.
That editorial has a certain “bring it on” tone, doesn’t it? The title of the editorial, by the way was “No inquiries, No charges, No evidence.” I guess they will have plenty of inquiries now.
Tags: 9/11, News of the World, Rupert Murdoch
And apparently Murdoch’s takeover of Sky News is in some jeopardy over this.
The closing of the NOTW is something of a Very Big Deal. This was still a paper with a huge circulation AND it was still making a great deal of money. It isn’t as though the Murdoch people chopped off a gangrenous limb here. I saw a clip of a British TV show where Steve Coogan ripped some ex-NOTW editor a new one. Said editor was actually trying to defend the eavesdropping. Will try to find it.
The plot thickens!
I’ve read somewhere that this closing is cosmetic. Murdoch has a weekly every bit as slimy as the NOTW and the NOTW is going to reopen shortly as the Sunday version of that weekly.
Why are our phones so insecure?
Between the Patriot Act and Murdoch, my cell phone is like a damn party line.
Maybe the victims were just using guessable passwords. But still, the phone shouldn’t let you guess more than a few passwords before locking you out and logging the source of the attempt.
They also worked really hard at getting private life details of Gordon Brown and his family.
Banking records, medical records of Brown and his wife and kids — these people have no boundaries whatsoever.
Electronic snooping is the right of kings.
I’m glad to see that the Guardian is using “News International” the parent company and not simply saying that it was a NOTW problem.
Murdoch needs to be in jail.
*All* of the Murdochs need to be in jail.
If this kind of snooping and access was SOP for the so-called reporters of NOTW, I wonder if this is SOP for the other Murdoch news organizations?
Doesn’t it make you all warm and fuzzy to know he owns the Wall Street Journal?
Steve Coogan going to town on Paul McMullen, an ex-NOTW editor and reporter.
McMullen has no idea what is wrong with snooping on phones and anywhere else. This is about 7:30 long.
This all reminds me that the right is perfectly comfortable having ideological media, but the left thinks everybody should be “objective.”
I never understood why we decided not to have a liberal media.
Murdoch shareholders now adding this escapade to their complaint against Murdoch nepotism in DE Chancery Court.
As of now NewsCorp stock price down 6.75%.
And Hugh Grant is joining the fun. Make sure to stay to the end (4+mins).
Thanks anon email tipster!
Carl Bernstein thinks that this is Murdoch’s Watergate.
@puck – in ireland and england the VM comes with a preset password – that password is “0000” and it is the same for all phones
like Verizon here has the last 4 digits of your phone number you preset VM password – and they tell the consumer to CHANGE IT!!
well, some consumers didn’t and these were some of the results.
This scandal just keeps getting bigger. Now it’s not just NOTW, it’s the Times of London and the Sun as well. When are we going to learn that Fox News and WSJ are doing it to? NewsCorp has a culture of lawlessness, it seems.
Some more revelations yesterday. They hacked PM Brown’s phone, released health records on PM Brown’s toddler son (printing that Brown’s son has cystic fibrosis), hacked Prince Charles phone, got confidential info on the queen’s schedule and hacked the phones of police investigating them.
Cassandra asks what for me is the most pertinent question:
“If this kind of snooping and access was SOP for the so-called reporters of NOTW, I wonder if this is SOP for the other Murdoch news organizations?”
Does anyone really think that only one Murdoch operation was involved with this? What was done with the information? Was any of it actually used, or, for example, was the Gordon Brown info used to ‘influence’ policy in England? Could the same thing be happening here? Say, to hold certain Rethugs and pathetic traitorous D’s feet to the fire in the budget ‘deliberations’?
I’m sure many will argue that this smacks of rampant paranoia. But this is exactly how a powerful press controlled by a few megalomaniacal individuals can not only control the dissemination of news, but can significantly impact public policy using illegally-obtained information.
The U. S. Department of Justice should immediately undertake an investigation into whether practices by the American entities within the Murdoch Empire have similarly violated the law.
Think about it. If these kind of egregious and unforgivable practices were taking place in England, how can anyone make the argument that it is highly unlikely that they were taking place here? I’d call that ‘faith-based blindness’.
If they only worked one fifth as hard to uncover Bush’s lies about Iraq…
*sigh*
Murdoch papers? They were at Ground Zero of helping to *manufacture* and distribute the Bush lies about Iraq.
I was listening to the BBC this AM and the police — who have been taking a pretty big hit for not delivering a proper investigation — are blaming News International for obstruction of their earlier investigations.