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Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Press

Mysterious Sue

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Hope no one minds me writing this on CF, but I can't believe no-one's talking about the phone hacking scandal going on at the moment, it's all making me feel a bit sick and rather ashamed to be British :(
This is my, probably very bias view on things, asking people to get involved.

For anyone who's been living under a stone for the last month, here is a breakdown of the bull ****:

1. News International (who are the largest newspaper publisher in the UK, whose titles include the Sun/News of the World and The Times) are being investigated for allegations of phone hacking of celebrities and high profile individuals. This week it was released that the NotW had hacked the voicemail of the murdered girl Milly Dowler, deleting her messages to make room for more emotional calls from her family. This destroyed possible evidence for police (one of them could have been the killer) and gave the family false hope that she was still alive when they found action carried out on her account! Now it appears, the victim's families of the 7/7 attacks in London had their phones hacked too!

2. The editor of NotW at the time of 7/7, Andy Coulson resigned after one of his reporter's was convicted of phone hacking, but went on to work for David Cameron's communications director, from which he resigned in January 2011 for continued media coverage of the phone hacking scandal. Emails have now come to light showing he approved payments to corrupt members of the police!

3. The editor of the NotW at the time of the Milly Dowler affair was Rebekah Brooks, who refuses all knowledge of the hire of the private investigator that carried out the phone hacking. Owner of News International, Rupert Murdoch (he owns the company News Corporation which in turn, owns News International) has failed to take responsibility for the newspaper's actions and people are running round like headless chickens to proportion blame to individuals!

4. Rupert Murdoch is also the creator of Fox Broadcasting Company in the USA and has significant personal links to UK political figures. His company News Corp also currently owns a 39% stake in BSkyB (as of June 2011), the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK. It is hoping to increase this stake to 100% giving it complete ownership of the largest TV and newspaper media sources in the country. There is currently a movement underway to get this stopped

5. News International often run articles calling for the demise of the BBC, the UK's 'technically' free television service, which is paid for through the mandatory television license paid by everyone to actually own a television in the UK. Example:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... e-fee.html
It may seem like a good idea to get rid of the licence fee, but this means no more BBC and, in my opinion, the end of unbiased reporting.

So one man controlling the largest media sources in the country - who lets slide phone hacking scandals for years....The whole thing stinks and looks completely corrupt to me. Also, I am a huge advocat for the BBC. It's quality of programming is admired worldwide, and it's unbiased reporting is needed among all this ****. That's just my view any way. Please feel free to argue a different point of view, support what I have to say, or correct anything I've got wrong.

I've spent the morning spreading this petition around fb and twitter. I usually doubt these things work, but apparently this one has been effective in the past, and at least has a chance to delay the News Corp takeover of BSkyB until the outcome of the phone hacking scandal. If you want to sign, thanks.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdoch_messages_2?twjp
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

As I've said on FB, I don't know how phone hacking works but since theres more space for explination here I would like to ask for a breif run down on it.

In more on the topic of the british press, I doesn't change my opinion of them. I'm the opposite of our beloved nealbie, I hate britishness and crap, especially the news. I only ever read the metro paper because it's free and for Nemi! :3
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

The sad thing is, I've reached the point where I expect major corporations to ignore the law, be corrupt and (for the most part) get away with it. It disgusts me, and something really needs to be done about it. Judging by the actions of both the government we have right now, and the party in opposition, I don't see that happening any time soon.

As for your comments on the BBC, all I can think of is the age old quote from graphic novel author Warren Ellis:

Warren Ellis said:
[The BBC] competes with commercial broadcasting in the same way a mountain completes with a road; the mountain was there first, and if the road doesn't want to route it, it can piss off.
Click to expand...
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

This is an explanation of how phone hacking worked in the Milly Dowler case, from the Guradian:

'The Guardian investigation has shown that, within a very short time of Milly vanishing, News of the World journalists reacted by engaging in what was standard practice in their newsroom: they hired private investigators to get them a story.

Their first step was simple, albeit illegal. Paperwork seen by the Guardian reveals that they paid a Hampshire private investigator, Steve Whittamore, to obtain home addresses and, where necessary, ex-directory phone numbers for any families called Dowler in the Walton area. The three addresses Whittamore found could be obtained lawfully on the electoral register. The two ex-directory numbers, however, were "blagged" illegally from British Telecom's confidential records by one of Whittamore's associates, John Gunning, who works from a base in Wiltshire. One of the ex-directory numbers was attributed by Whittamore to Milly's family home.

Then, with the help of its own full-time private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World started illegally intercepting mobile phone messages. Scotland Yard is now investigating evidence that the paper hacked directly into the voicemail of the missing girl's own phone.'

It doesn't go into any more detail, but I'm assuming that once you know her number you bribe someone at the phone company to give you access. This would be fairly easy (all mobile phone voicemails can be accessed and edited from a landline number. I've used this system myself).

Hope this explains it a bit


MouseAT - loving the Warren Ellis quote...if only it were true. I feel it's more a case of acid rain on limestone </geologist>
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

Twitter's on fire with news of this. If you're one to keep ahead, follow Graham Linehan. Keeps my feed fresh with salient retweets on it, and also made the IT Crowd. So that's nice. Er, back to the topic with some relevant linkspam:

Telegraph hack accuses BBC's Dowler coverage of 'blackening reputation' of Murdoch.

Channel Four broke this last night. Turns out the guy who was investigating it was hacked himself. Christ.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has said that the latest revelations surrounding the News of the World will not affect the announcement by Jeremy Hunt as to his stance over the takeover of BSkyB. This was the one that got me. Cheers, Mr ****.

Also, here's a list of all the companies who've pulled advertising from NOTW: Vauxhall, Ford, Halifax, Virgin Hols, Co-op. Pondering: Thomson/FirstChoice, Npower,T-Mob, Vodafone.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

This would be fairly easy (all mobile phone voicemails can be accessed and edited from a landline number.
Click to expand...

A lot of people are unaware of this, and a lot of those are also unaware that the default password to access most voicemail from an outside line is 0000 until the user goes in to change it. Since most people don't need to access their voicemail from a landline, it goes unchanged.

The hacker tries their luck, is more often than not succesful, and then can change the password to the voicemails. Accessing from a mobile should remain unaffected (you don't need to enter a password as you're linking directly from the phone the message was sent to), so the person being hacked is none the wiser.

And there you have it.

Now that you know how to do it, don't do it!
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

Rupert Murdoch has built himself an empire, got billions in the bank and influence that 99.999999% of us can only dream of.

Put yourself in a journalist's shoes. You want a story, You want to get close to the source, you'll try anything. Is there anything "wrong" about trying to guess somebody's pin code?

Yes. Ethically there is. Especially if that person is a victim of murder/terrorism.

It could be argued that it's not the fault of the journalist that the victim didn't change their pin code. A journalist is doing his/her job. They are investigating using every option available to them.

It's a very grey area. As I said, ethically it's 100% wrong and it takes a c unt to do that sort of thing.

And there's no bigger c unt that Rupert Murdoch.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

Well I guess there isn't much hope then:
http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2011/07/0 ... -decision/

I don't understand it. Politicians have to resign if they are unethical in their private lives, yet large companies can be unethical in one arena, yet be allowed to expand in another - one that will have much further reaching effects.

Thanks Owain, this interesting article, showing the counter-argument:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/david ... -coverage/
There is a view that the BBC is bigging up the story to save it's own skin. Does anyone blame them? Would the NoTW be doing any different?

There is of course, also the argument that some phone hacking is ok. The Guradian for instance, admits to a small number of cases where criminal acts are suspected. Do we ban all phone hacking? How do we define what is in the public interest? How do we draw the line between celebrity/criminal/terror victim?
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

'An astonishing story which at one point, we've been told, had the police secretly watching the News of the World watching the police.'

Wtf!!! My head hurts!
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

So... NOTW gone, Sun moves to 7-day publication?

Same **** different name.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

This is a bloody devious move.

By closing down News of the World, they're attempting to diffuse the anger so that those responsible can avoid being held for account. Rather than the execs having to resign, they can no doubt get nice settlement packages as the company closes, whilst the low level employees will likely be told "it's all over, start looking for a new job". Once the News of the World is no more, I suspect a lot of the demands to "do something" will start to subside. After all, the company is gone, who do you hold to account? News Corp? What's that?

What needs to happen now is that the executives responsible need to face criminal charges, and News Corp itself needs to face serious penalties. Anything less and those at the top will be sat smugly behind closed doors going "heh, got away with that one" and figuring out how they're going to make up the gap in revenues through their other publications.

I bet half the reason the News of the World closed is due to the number of advertisers pulling out over the last couple of days. What we really need is those advertisers to withdraw from all News Corp publications. Anyone know if these advertisers are still putting money in Murdoch's back pocket via his other subsidiaries?
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

^This.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

Do you think Rebekah Brookes (What a stupid way to spell Rebecca) can claim she was in Italy when everyone found out the paper was being shelved? :lol:
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

While it is decidedly dodgy, I really think this whole thing is being blown way out of all proportion (the BBC are rubbing their hands in glee right now). I know I'm in the minority, but I seriously couldn't give a ****.

Nobody actually cared when it was just celebrities being spied on a bit, but now it's "Oh my God, OUR BOYS in Afghanistan!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and yep, here comes the OUTRAGE!

That's not me defending what's been done, but journalists are generally arseholes who will use whatever methods are available to them to do their job. We shouldn't be that surprised. They weren't bugging people's phones or secretly recording their conversations. Hacking is a ridiculously over-the-top word to use to make people believe that more was done than actually was. We're talking about listening in to people's voicemails, not tapping into their conversations, listening to their voicemails.

Yes, that's hugely unethical in itself (and I'm away that voicemails were deleted to make room for more), but nobody's phone has, to my understanding at least, been "hacked".

Why are people not blasting the phone companies that allowed this massive glitch in the first place. Before this all happened, did anyone actually know that their voicemail could be accessed from an outside line, and that this would require a PIN that you need to set yourself?

Thinking about it I'm sure I "knew" I could get to my voicemail from outside; I'm sure I read it somewhere, but did I ever act on that? Does anyone?

No? Thought not.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

It's the corrupt police that took bribes that are more worrying to me than any members of the phone company.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVIkmJcodFM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

^^I'm not talking about any individual members of any specific phone company, but the fact that there's such a ridiculously easy way to access other people's voicemails. It's obviously a massive flaw in the system, and rather than question why that flaw was ever allowed to exist, everyone is doing a "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" because a few journalists and private investigators exploited it.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

Yeah, what Gavin said.

I also don't really see what would be so exciting on a phone message... Do people even USE answering machines since the invention of just texting them.

OK, it's bad, but, it's not genocide or anything.
 
Re: Phone hacking and the crappy state of of the British Pre

BEN, LIKE, OMG! THEY'RE LIKE DED, SO IT'S BAD. DUH!
 
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