Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail "hacked by News of the World"

[ymu]

Who was the journo killed?

I don't know why I said investigative reporter there, cos he was a private investigator. A big trial just collapsed. Hang on. I'll get the links.

 

[killer b]

That's the one mrs m.

 

[London_Calling]

Finally getting that momentum we saw with the PM's expenses.... but that had the database of personal and private information bought (finally) by the Telegraph to sustain it.

ooh, the irony.

 

[ymu]

Not Daniel Morgan is it? Big case (unsolved) in South London quite a while ago

Yes. His brother was on. The family knew a lot of it at the time, but not which paper. They are finally getting their say, now the court case is over and people are listening, thanks to the scandal breaking.

http://www.channel4.com/news/news-of-the-world-targets-met-police-detective

The Guardian covered this a lot when the trial collapsed too.

NotW were following the man who was killed when the police were following him, and then they put the detective on the case under surveillance. It's very complicated, and very sinister.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I don't think it made the national news in a big way, but the South London Press stuck with it for years which is why I remember it.

 

[Barking_Mad]

I don't know why I said investigative reporter there, cos he was a private investigator. A big trial just collapsed. Hang on. I'll get the links.

And this...

Morgan's brother Alastair and his elderly mother believed, with credible evidence to draw on, that he was killed because he was about to expose a network of corrupt police who were involved in widespread criminality and used Southern Investigations as a conduit for drugs and money. Morgan's business partner, Jonathan Rees, counted many officers as friends. One of his specialities was to use his "friends" in the force to provide information which he sold to tabloid newspapers.

 

[ymu]

Thanks all. My memory for names is shocking, so that saved me much trawling through the wrong articles.

 

[RaverDrew]

I want to make a complaint to the News of the World, but I don't know how.

So I'm just going to leave them a message on my voicemail instead....

 

[Citizen66]

bindun

 

[RaverDrew]

Fail

 

[Citizen66]

Still worth being reminded of!

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

According to The Guardian's piece which broke the story, Surrey police were aware what the NoTW had done.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world

The paper made little effort to conceal the hacking from its readers. On 14 April 2002, it published a story about a woman allegedly pretending to be Milly Dowler who had applied for a job with a recruitment agency: "It is thought the hoaxer even gave the agency Milly's real mobile number … The agency used the number to contact Milly when a job vacancy arose and left a message on her voicemail … It was on March 27, six days after Milly went missing, that the employment agency appears to have phoned her mobile."

The newspaper also made no effort to conceal its activity from Surrey police. After it had hacked the message from the recruitment agency on Milly's phone, the paper informed police about it. It was Surrey detectives who established that the call was not intended for Milly Dowler. At the time, Surrey police suspected that phones belonging to detectives and to Milly's parents also were being targeted.

One of those who was involved in the original inquiry said: "We'd arrange landline calls. We didn't trust our mobiles."

However, they took no action against the News of the World, partly because their main focus was to find the missing schoolgirl and partly because this was only one example of tabloid misbehaviour. As one source close to the inquiry put it: "There was a hell of a lot of dirty stuff going on." Two earlier Yard inquiries had failed to investigate the relevant notes in Mulcaire's logs.

If this is true then Wade's personal denial of any knowledge that she made to the Dowler family today is an outright lie.

 

[London_Calling]

Wade wouldn't know a lie if it slapped her around the face. She's entirely amoral and really, genuinely doesn't give a fuck.

How else would someone get to be CEO of News International.

 

[paolo]

Yes. Rather shit hot. Worth watching. Brother of the investigative reporter who was murdered whilst investigating News International, and being followed by News International whilst the police had him under surveillance, was interviewed. The implication that Brooks was involved in a contract killing is hard to avoid ...

At the very least, trying to derail the investigation after the fact.

Or far worse, that something nasty was going to happen to the detective. The Met putting him under witness protection after discovering the NotW targeting suggests they thought it was a serious possibility.

Gobsmacking. And we know there is so much more to come.

In other news, Rebekah Wade has announced that she has appointed Rebekah Wade, to investigate impropriety whilst Rebekah Wade was in charge. A surprisingly early verdict - made at during the announcement of the beginnings of an investigation - was that Rebekah Wade was in no way to blame.

* Wade/Brooks of course.

 

[Giles]

Is this "hacking" of phones something clever and technical, or does it just work on people who did not bother to set a PIN to control access to their voicemails?

If I want to access my voicemails either from my own phone or from somewhere else, I must type in a 4-digit PIN.

Can these "hackers" get past this, or can they only "hack" those who never set a PIN to limit access?

Giles..

 

[paolo]

Is this "hacking" of phones something clever and technical, or does it just work on people who did not bother to set a PIN to control access to their voicemails?

Yes. Default PINs is my understanding. Although there was other stuff... blagging private details out of BT by deception, that kind of thing.

 

[Ranbay]

It just using the 4 digit code i think.

 

[paolo]

She's entirely amoral and really, genuinely doesn't give a fuck.

How else would someone get to be CEO of News International.

Yep. A corporate climber of the worst possible kind, climbing one of the worst possible corporations.

 

[Santino]

Or just buying details from a contact at the phone company.

 

[editor]

Yes. Default PINs is my understanding. Although there was other stuff... blagging private details out of BT by deception, that kind of thing.

I think because most people didn't expect to be hacked they probably went with really obvious PIN numbers (1111, 1234 etc).

 

[Kaka Tim]

This looks like its getting messier and messier for all involved.

Widespread Public moral outrage, advertisers pulling out, more shit to come out with regards to the soham murders (and who knows what else?) Cameron is good mates with Wade, police implicated as being in cahoots with murdoch and a strong link with an unsolved hitman style murder which reeked of police corruption - fuck me its like the script for some dark thriller.

Millimetre has called for Wade to resign - that looks a sure bet and at the very least the NOTW is going to be severely damaged. Murdochs other interests likely to take some sort of collatoral damage as well.

The irony is that they are being brought down by exactly the kind of moral outrage over dead kids that they have fed off for years.


Murdoch, the news of the world, the met - Dirty corrupt fuckers who deserve everything thats coming to them and much much more.

 

[Citizen66]

Yes. Rather shit hot. Worth watching. Brother of the investigative reporter who was murdered whilst investigating News International, and being followed by News International whilst the police had him under surveillance, was interviewed. The implication that Brooks was involved in a contract killing is hard to avoid ...

The murder itself was 24 years ago.

 

[Threshers_Flail]

Front page of tomorrow's Independent.

Sorry if a little big.

 

[Santino]

Tomorrow's Independent cover story: http://twitpic.com/5lq1db

 

[stethoscope]

Turning up the heat!

 

[editor]

Front page of tomorrow's Independent.

Sorry if a little big.

The bigger the better.

 

[paolo]

Murdochs other interests likely to take some sort of collatoral damage as well.

It's going to be interesting.

The Times, today, gave the story some reasonable prominence. If it continues to do so, it may survive with little more distrust than it already has from being NI.

The Sun however... Well, I do like to think they'll take a dent in newstand sales. Maybe it won't be massive, but 10 or 20% would be a nice spank for so clearly in with this whole thing.

 

[paolo]

Front page of tomorrow's Independent.

Sorry if a little big.

So, it took all of about 8 hours for her to be exposed as a lying toe-rag.

Nice one Indy.

 

[paolo]

Newsnight team must be writing and re-writing tonight... would love to be a fly on the wall in their office as they busily try to keep up in time for tonight's programme. One hour to go folks. Reckon NI will field a representative? Probably one who'll just go "we can neither confirm or deny"... Then Paxman gets a gun out... (sorry, carried away there )

 

[ymu]

Is this "hacking" of phones something clever and technical, or does it just work on people who did not bother to set a PIN to control access to their voicemails?

If I want to access my voicemails either from my own phone or from somewhere else, I must type in a 4-digit PIN.

Can these "hackers" get past this, or can they only "hack" those who never set a PIN to limit access?

Giles..

IIRC, they were bribing phone company employees for the information, probably via police officers in some cases. Many of the targets were not using default pins. The Panorama on this had a private detective saying he'd infected a military officer's computer with a trojan to obtain documents off it.

Not as benign as they'd like you to think.