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

[Streathamite]

For one of "the most high-profile lawyers in the country" he seems a little coy.

don't you think it's just that, like accountants, most lawyers tend towards the restrained and understated in their writing style?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

when I read that report, my disgust with NI reached new levels

Not just NI either ...

Surrey Police knew for nine years that the News of the World had been hacking Milly Dowler's voicemails – and was even played a recording of one message by a journalist from the Sunday newspaper – but never took action about the law-breaking or told her anguished family.

The force, which was investigating the schoolgirl's disappearance and murder in 2002, has stayed silent for a decade despite repeatedly being given evidence of the NOTW illegally accessing the 13-year-old's mobile phone messages during the middle of its inquiries. Two other police forces also had knowledge of the hacking, it emerged yesterday in highly damaging evidence released by Parliament.

In a trail of logged exchanges between Surrey Police and journalists from the now-defunct Murdoch-owned tabloid – finally released yesterday after months of demands from this newspaper and another – officers and public relations officials from the force are shown to have been fully aware of how NOTW journalists illegally hacked into her mobile phone during 2002, and yet did and said nothing until late 2011.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-covered-up-dowler-hacking-6293669.html

 

[two sheds]

It's because of this sort of thing that I'd agree with Hislop - we don't need new laws, we just need the laws that we have to be applied. If we get new laws they will undoubtedly actually just protect people like MPs and *still* not be applied when journos snuggle up to the police.

As we keep hearing for the rest of us, there should be stiff penalties for this sort of thing to act as a deterrent to others.

 

[London_Calling]

If I were Surrey Police I'd take my lead from Parliament, and if Parliament had ignored an admission of paying serving police officers for information, an admission of criminality - made by Wade directly to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in open session - I'd take that as a pretty strong indicator of which way the wind was blowing. That was in March 2003.

 

[Streathamite]

Not just NI either ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-covered-up-dowler-hacking-6293669.html

that is utterly outrageous. If I were the Dowlers, I'd sue them for millions.

 

[ska invita]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/28/news-international-four-men-arrested
Its spread to the Sun! Four Sun hacks arrested

But crucially this is" nothing to do with voicemail interception and solely relates to paying police for stories." I jumped the gun a bit there

ETA: IS this still the main phone hack thread?

 

[butchersapron]

This is just payments to the police for info - not hacking.

 

[paolo]

This is just payments to the police for info - not hacking.

Just as much win though

Bent cops and their feeders are arguably (well, not arguable ) lower vermin than dodgy hacks.

 

[London_Calling]

It's still the privacy issue. For example, how many hundreds of people did NI undermine when those people had a legitimate cause but NI paid bent coppers for details of any previous - almost entirely unrelated - convictions (and spent convictions), and pasting up huge headlines about them...

 

[paolo]

It's still the privacy issue. For example, how many hundreds of people did NI undermine when those people had a legitimate cause but NI paid bent coppers for details of any previous - almost entirely unrelated - convictions (and spent convictions), and pasting up huge headlines about them...

I have a few friends who work on "the street of shame". One of them who I caught up with a week or so ago, a sub on a red top, was largely unrepentant about the trade, but was mortified about the collective 'justice' dished out to Christopher Jeffries.

That was massively fucked up. A contemporary case of why our press needs a good lasting legal kicking. (my view, not my friends, not that I asked)

[edit: name correction thanks to DaveCinzano]

 

[DaveCinzano]

Christopher Jefferies I believe?

 

[killer b]

http://nthurlbeck.blogspot.com/

I thought nev was firmly in the ni camp... When did this change?

 

[DaveCinzano]

http://nthurlbeck.blogspot.com/2012/01/news-internationals-crisis-of-trust.html

I witnessed the coal-mines and shipyards of Sunderland closing down for good after centuries of proud, world famous history in the 1970s and 80s. Many serving and retired workers cried at the time. I now understand where their cries came from. It is a sense of failure that everything you have worked for all your life has suddenly turned to dust and didn’t work out.

"LOL"?

 

[killer b]

Oh my.

 

[DaveCinzano]

http://nthurlbeck.blogspot.com/

I thought nev was firmly in the ni camp... When did this change?

Loyalty to the company throughout this whole brouhaha does seem to have depended on whether the company continued paying the legal bills.

 

[teqniq]

What the fuck is that supposed to be about? The man is a fool.

 

[London_Calling]

I had a 70s Glam Rock morning so pop pickers:

Neville, Neville, you should confess ...
Neville, Neville, your life is a mess...
Neville, Neville, you should have known...
Murdoch's cock, you loved it so.

 

[ska invita]

Lots of insight into whats going on re The Sun from Nick Davies here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/29/data-pool-3-sun-arrests-murdoch

If I were a betting man (I am), Id bet that the Sun is going to be destroyed by this. Odds are good. The dirt is in there, they jut have to find it.

Best read it yourselves, but this seems the key bit:

Under enormous legal and political pressure, Murdoch has ordered that the police be given everything they need. Whereas Scotland Yard began their inquiry a year ago with nothing much more than the heap of scruffy paperwork seized from the NoW's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, Murdoch's Management and Standards Committee has now handed them what may be the largest cache of evidence ever gathered by a police operation in this country, including the material that led to Saturday's arrests.

They have access to a mass of internal paperwork – invoices, reporters' expense claims, accounts, bank records, phone records. And technicians have retrieved an enormous reservoir of material from News International's central computer servers, including one particularly vast collection that may yet prove to be the stick that breaks the media mogul's back. It is known as Data Pool 3.

It contains several hundred million emails sent and received over the years by employees of the News of the World – and of the three other Murdoch titles. Data Pool 3 is so big that the police are not even attempting to read every message. Instead, there are two teams searching it for key words: a detective sergeant with five detective constables from Scotland Yard working secretly on criminal leads; and 32 civilians working for the Management and Standards Committee, providing information for the civil actions brought by public figures and for the Leveson inquiry and passing relevant material to police.

For News International, Data Pool 3 is a nightmare. Firstly, no one know what is in there. All they can do is wait and see how bad it gets.

Second, the police clearly believe it may yield new evidence of the crimes they set out to investigate – the "blagging" of confidential data from phone companies, banks, tax offices etc; the interception of voicemails and emails; the payment of bribes to police officers.

Third – and most nightmarish – Data Pool 3 could yield evidence of attempts to destroy evidence the high court and police were seeking. Data Pool 3 itself was apparently deliberately deleted from News International's servers.

If proved, such conduct would be serious because it could see the courts imposing long prison sentences; and because it could have been sanctioned by senior employees and directors.

The Guardian last July revealed police suspicions that a huge number of emails had been deliberately destroyed. Since then, high court hearings have disclosed more detail. Late in 2009, News International decided to delete old email from their servers. This appears to have been a simple piece of electronic housekeeping. However, the plan was not executed.

Goes on to say about deleted emails and how they've all been recovered

 

[London_Calling]

What a great name 'Data Pool 3'. Totally Tinker, Tailor.

 

[killer b]

Loyalty to the company throughout this whole brouhaha does seem to have depended on whether the company continued paying the legal bills.

i've not been following it too closely recently - when did he get thrown under the bus?

 

[DexterTCN]

Lots of insight into whats going on re The Sun from Nick Davies here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/29/data-pool-3-sun-arrests-murdoch

If I were a betting man (I am), Id bet that the Sun is going to be destroyed by this. Odds are good. The dirt is in there, they jut have to find it.

Best read it yourselves, but this seems the key bit:

Goes on to say about deleted emails and how they've all been recovered

Lots of interest in that!

The four men arrested on Saturday are not linked to the NoW. They come from the Sun, from the top of the tree – the current head of news and his crime editor, the former managing editor and deputy editor.

They felt they had enough shit to go straight to the top (well not the top, but the top).

At the outer reaches of possibility, police may find evidence of illegal activity by other private investigators, which could conceivably lead them to other news organisations who also hired them. Since Saturday morning, nothing is certain.

Could pretty much be the end of large parts of the newspaper industry. And not much missed, most of it. It's a defunct industry anyway.

 

[DaveCinzano]

i've not been following it too closely recently - when did he get thrown under the bus?

For example:

http://nthurlbeck.blogspot.com/2012/01/news-internationals-crisis-of-trust_19.html

..In February, 2006, I was dispatched by a newsdesk executive to intercept Ms Crisan on a train and put to her an allegation that she had been conducting an affair with Fiennes.

I did so, alighted then wrote a few pars of copy. From memory she refused to comment.

That was my total and complete involvement.

What I didn’t know was that Ms Crisan was selling her story to the Sunday People and the Mail on Sunday through the publicist Max Clifford.

And that the News of the World had hacked the phone of Max Clifford’s assistant Nicola Phillips in order to steal her story....

...While that executive hid from the legal fallout once again, I was subjected to a High Court action.

News Group Newspapers and Glenn Mulcaire were accused by Ms Crisan’s lawyers of hacking her phone...

...I even tried News International’s lawyers Olswang myself. Lawyer Dan Tench tried but failed to obtain approval to represent me. It was all down to me. My legal costs, Crisan’s legal costs if we fought it and lost. Then damages.

And all simply because I asked a woman a question on a train, in the normal course of my work, on the instructions of my news desk.

People like Will Lewis have made News International a dangerous place to work and an unlikely choice of career move for anyone of any quality in our industry any more.

There is a growing perception that top down, systematic corruption, as revealed in court today, could see you robbed of your job, your house and your liberty.

And News International will walk away and leave you to it.

 

[Badgers]

Does anyone think that The Sun will fall on the sword with this too?

 

[DaveCinzano]

i've not been following it too closely recently - when did he get thrown under the bus?

When he broke cover in November to put his version of events into the purplest of prose for the Press Gazette he was not exactly complimentary about his managers (though he did construct a narrative that removed blame from the shoulders of Brooks and Murdoch the Lesser).

 

[London_Calling]

Does anyone think that The Sun will fall on the sword with this too?

NotW went as both Operation Elveden and the Public Inquiry (Levensen) were announced but remained unknown quantities, Weeting had been running for six months but was not yet seen as effective, public sentiment demanded a sacrifice, the political class abandoned Murdoch and so something had to give.

When it's actually in place, the 'mood' is generally inclined towards letting due process do its job, so my guess is The Sun is safe for now.

Perhaps it’s interesting to reflect that it's taken two Murdoch’s to be publically flogged by a Parliamentary Committee,the loss of the £10 billion Sky deal, two mammoth police operations, a 3-4 year PI and the demise of the words largest selling Sunday to satisfy the mood of that moment.

So far, so good

 

[ska invita]

Does anyone think that The Sun will fall on the sword with this too?

I think NOTW closed because of the plan to have the Sunday Sun (due out in spring I heard), so it didn't really dent the empire. I don't think they'll so easily ditch the Sun. The brand would have to be really badly damaged in the eyes of Sun readers for that to happen - something akin/ a lot worse to the Milly Dowler thing.

I bet there is dirt on people high up the food chain, but this won't necessarily topple the paper.There's every reason to believe that there are hundreds of potential infringements in Data Pool 3 cases, which could lead to endless settlements and court cases - the costs of that must add up, but News Int. aren't short of cash. Maybe there is a chance that those not in the Murdoch circle will want to push him and his clan out, and they may not be so sentimental about the Sun, or the loss-making Times. It's fun to speculate

 

[Jon-of-arc]

Id be surprised if they get much out of the emails. Youd have to be pretty niaive to put anything truly incrminating in one on the NI servers.

 

[stavros]

As a minor aside, I found out at the weekend that Mulcaire played and scored the first ever goal for AFC Wimbledon.

 

[London_Calling]

Id be surprised if they get much out of the emails. Youd have to be pretty niaive to put anything truly incrminating in one on the NI servers.

Jesus, I wouldn't take too many bets on that.

Fwiw, these four most recent arrests at The Sun were all based on these emails.

 

[Ted Striker]

Some good to-ing and fro-ing between 2 lawyers today...Must admit (Sir) Christopher Meyer (former head of PCC) is winning on points