@Walter Hinteler,
Rebekah Brooks gave her the mobile phone- what a kind lady she is- then Mulcaire got the number on his hacking list.
I wonder if the two events are linked?
Brooks says she is horrified.
I'd be horrified too, if my world had suddenly turned to s*** the was hers has.
Still, no conclusive proof yet eh. But no smoke without fire either.
I see Piers Morgan is fighting a rearguard action too. It couldn't be happening to nicer people.
@McTag,
According to the BBC, Mulcaire had a lot of phone numbers. But the owners of those phone numbers would not be contacted by the police unless there was something else as well like pin numbers etc.
It just shows how truly dispicable those people are.
@izzythepush,
Just on the BBC Tom Watson has asked the select committe to recall Murdoch plus exNOTW editor and legal chief to get to the bottom of the Dear Neville email.
Want to know when the news source you're visiting is Murdoch-owned? Now you can with this handy add-on 'Murdoch Alert':
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/MurdochAlert-details/
@hingehead,
Ah, but I don't need that "Murdoch alert", any more than you do, hinge!
For starters, he owns most of our (Oz) news media ... but if in doubt, I just go by the political content. A very accurate indicator!
But what a terrific little add-0n.
That may prove very handy for o/s purposes!
Well what can you say?
Good on you, BSkyB board, for your unanimous decision.
Great to see you've taken all the recent developments & what has been learned from them, into account!
Quote:James Murdoch confirmed as BSkyB chairman
(Reuters) - James Murdoch was unanimously confirmed as chairman by BSkyB's board, winning a reprieve from a phone-hacking scandal that threatens to draw him into multiple investigations, two sources briefed on the board meeting told Reuters.
Thursday's meeting of the BSkyB board was its first since the crisis forced News Corp to close the News of the World newspaper, drop a $12 billion bid for BSkyB and offer up James and his father Rupert to answer questions in the UK parliament.
Several shareholders had demanded he step down to avoid conflicts of interest, fearing contamination from the scandal that acquired new dimensions earlier this month when it was revealed that a murdered schoolgirl had had her phone hacked.
One of the sources said: "The role of chairman was discussed at some length," and added that the board would be monitoring external developments that might prove relevant to Murdoch's continuing chairmanship. ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/28/us-bskyb-idUSTRE76Q77M20110728
@msolga,
Murdoch owns/controls a significant amount of the shares. Nobody's going to take him on in the boardroom unless he is found to be personally culpable. That's not yet happened. That doesn't mean to say it won't happen.
@izzythepush,
From the front page of today's Guardian:
Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in July 2000, has been told by Scotland Yard that they have found evidence to suggest she was targeted by the News of the World's investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail.
Police had earlier told her correctly that her name was not among those recorded in Mulcaire's notes, but on Tuesday officers from Operation Weeting told her they had found her personal details among the investigator's notes. These had previously been thought to refer to a different target.
Friends of Payne have told the Guardian that she is "absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed" at the disclosure. Her cause had been championed by the News of the World, and in particular by its former editor, Rebekah Brooks. Believing that she had not been a target for hacking, Payne wrote a farewell column for the paper's final edition on 10 July, referring to its staff as "my good and trusted friends".
The evidence that police have found in Mulcaire's notes is believed to relate to a phone given to Payne by Brooks to help her stay in touch with her supporters.
On Thursday night Brooks insisted the phone had not been a personal gift but had been provided to Payne by the News of the World "for the benefit of the campaign for Sarah's law".
In a statement, Brooks said the latest allegations were "abhorrent" and "particularly upsetting" because Sara Payne was a "dear friend".
Responding earlier to news that Payne's details had been found in Mulcaire's notes, one of Payne's close colleagues said: "We are all appalled and disgusted. Sara is in bits about it." It is not known whether any messages for Payne were successfully hacked by Mulcaire.
Coming after the disclosure that the News of the World hacked and deleted the voicemail of the murdered Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler, the news will raise further questions about whether News Corporation is "fit and proper" to own TV licences and its 39% share of BSkyB.
It will also revive speculation about any possible role in phone hacking of Brooks, who was personally very closely involved in covering the aftermath of Sarah Payne's murder and has always denied any knowledge of voicemail interception. On 15 July Brooks resigned as chief executive of News International and was arrested and interviewed by police.
The Labour MP Tom Watson, who has been an outspoken critic of News International, said of the Payne allegation: "This is a new low. The last edition of the News of the World made great play of the paper's relationship with the Payne family. Brooks talked about it at the committee inquiry. Now this. I have nothing but contempt for the people that did this."
Friends of Payne said she had accepted the News of the World as a friend and ally. Journalists from the paper attended the funerals of her mother and father and visited her sick bed after she suffered a severe stroke in December 2009.
In the wake of the Guardian's disclosure on 4 July of the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone, there were rumours that Payne also might have been a victim. Police from Operation Weeting, which has been investigating the News of the World's phone hacking since January, checked the names of Payne and her closest associates against its database of all the information contained in the notebooks, computer records and audio tapes seized from Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006. They found nothing.
The News of the World's sister paper, the Sun, was quick to report on its website, on 8 July, that Payne had been told there was no evidence to support the rumours. The next day the Sun quoted her paying tribute to the News of the World, whose closure had been announced by News International. "It's like a friend died. I'm so shocked," she told them.
In the paper's final edition on Sunday 10 July, Payne registered her own anger at the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone: "We have all seen the news this week and the terrible things that have happened, and I have no wish to sweep it under the carpet. Indeed, there were rumours - which turned out to be untrue - that I and my fellow Phoenix charity chiefs had our phones hacked. But today is a day to reflect, to look back and remember the passing of an old friend, the News of the World."
Since then, detectives from Weeting have searched the Mulcaire database for any reference to mobile phone numbers used by Sara Payne or her closest associates or any other personal details. They are believed to have uncovered notes made by Mulcaire which include some of these details but which had previously been thought to refer to a different target of his hacking. Police have some 11,000 pages of notes which Mulcaire made in the course of intercepting the voicemail of targets chosen by the News of the World.
Friends of Sara Payne said that she had made no decision about whether to sue the paper and that she wanted the police to be able to finish their work before she decided.
Operation Weeting is reviewing all high-profile cases involving the murder, abduction or assault of any child since 2001 in an attempt to find out if any of those involved was the target of phone hacking.
In her statement, Brooks said: "The idea that anyone on the newspaper knew that Sara or the campaign team were targeted by Mr Mulcaire is unthinkable. The idea of her being targeted is beyond my comprehension.
"It is imperative for Sara and the other victims of crime that these allegations are investigated and those culpable brought to justice."
Hayley Barlow, former News of the World PR, said on Twitter on Thursday night that Payne was baffled by the news that Mulcaire had details of her phone "as she didn't even have voicemail on her phone until 2009".
The revelations came as it was announced that James Murdoch had received a ringing endorsement from directors of satellite group BSkyB.
A lengthy board meeting on Thursday at BSkyB ended with unanimous support for Rupert Murdoch's youngest son to continue as chairman of the group following the collapse of his family firm's bid for the 61% of the satellite business it does not already own.
The Hacked Off campaign, which represents phone-hacking victims and is calling for a full public inquiry into the matter, said the Payne allegations indicated "breathtaking hypocrisy and a complete lack of moral sense" on the part of the News of the World.
The Phoenix Chief Advocates, co-run by Payne, said in a statement: "Whilst it was previously confirmed by Operation Weeting that Sara Payne's name was not on private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's list, it has now been confirmed by Operation Weeting that Sara's details are on his list.
"Sara is absolutely devastated by this news, we're all deeply disappointed and are just working to get her through it.
"Sara will continue to work with the proper authorities regarding this matter."
The Met (Scotland Yard) is now running three separate investigations: one into phone interceptions, one into computer crime and the third into police corruption ....
@Walter Hinteler,
Walter Hinteler wrote:
The Met (Scotland Yard) is now running three separate investigations: one into phone interceptions, one into computer crime and the third into police corruption ....
Government agencies investigating themselves does not have a particularly good track record.
@hawkeye10,
Quote:Government agencies investigating themselves does not have a particularly good track record.
Actually, I agree with you on this, hawkeye.
I think there are so many serious questions, which urgently need to be addressed after what has occurred, that an independent inquiry is warranted.
Certainly Scotland Yard should not be investigating allegations of corruption which its own members/employees have been implicated in.
Walter was simply
reporting on recent developments. He gave no opinion on the appropriateness of those developments. :
Quote:The Met (Scotland Yard) is now running three separate investigations: one into phone interceptions, one into computer crime and the third into police corruption ....
@msolga,
Quote:Certainly Scotland Yard should not be investigating allegations of corruption which its own members/employees have been implicated in.
The police do this all the time, or rather, relatively frequently.
They just bring in officers from another force where necessary. The Metropolitan Police are responsible for only the London Metropolitan area. Although, the Chief Commissioner of the Met is recognised as the senior police officer in the UK.
@McTag,
But, McTag, in
your opinion is it the best way to go about investigating these particular allegations?
@McTag,
McTag wrote:
The police do this all the time, or rather, relatively frequently.
They just bring in officers from another force where necessary. The Metropolitan Police are responsible for only the London Metropolitan area. Although, the Chief Commissioner of the Met is recognised as the senior police officer in the UK.
I think that such is done anywhere. And I can't think, how it could be done differently ... besides that you get all those investigations done by a foreign ploice force.
Quote:A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "Since January 2011 the MPS has received a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy which fall outside the remit of Operation Weeting, including computer hacking. Some aspects of this operation will move forward to a formal investigation. There will be a new team reporting DAC Sue Akers. The formation of that team is yet to take place."
Source
@Walter Hinteler,
Perhaps I'm relating too much to my own local (Victoria, Oz) circumstances, Walter?
We have experienced years of very serious police corruption, but the (govt instituted) bodies set up to investigate the allegations have been completely inadequate.
There have been calls for an independent royal commission for
years now & it hasn't happened. I can't see (in my local situation, anyway) how anything else would work.
Perhaps I am projecting & the British do these things better, in-house?
In the United States and Canada, there are public bodies whose job it is to investigate police matters. In most jurisdictions, they are required to investigate in certain circumstances, such as when a police officer shoots someone. They are usually formed as a board (in Ontario, for example, they have the Police Services Board) which includes "civilians" as well as the police, and they are often overseen by the States Attorney's Office (U.S.) or the Crown Prosecutor's Office (Canada). The problem lies in the necessity to use someone who has investigative skills and resources (the police and prosecutors). A genuinely corrupt police force is going to be able to hinder any investigation, and prosecutors need to be able to work closely with the police to do their job, so they will not want to alienate them.
One solution is using one agency to investigate another. In the U.S., for example, every state has a state police agency, and they can be used to investigate county sheriff's police or municipal police deaprtments. The Federal Bureau of Investigation can also be called in. In the former case, you still have the problem that police tend to close ranks, and they are often "incestuous"--municipal police officers and county sheriff's police often aspire to become state policemen, and many of the state police are former municipal or county officers. In the latter case, local police agencies resent the FBI and sometimes cooperate as little as possible when that agency is called in.
In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would be the "super" agency which might be called into investigate local corruption. However, the RCMP itself has in recent years often been accused of corruption, and in many parts of Canada where the population (and therefore the money for policing resources) is low, the RCMP also provides local police services.
This is a problem for which i don't think an easy solution can be found.
@msolga,
msolga wrote:
Perhaps I am projecting & the British do these things better, in-house?
Well, there is no "state"-organised police in the UK, but it's (more or less at least) just one police force (in the three distinct legal systems).
I suppose, it could be done by officers from ... say, Scotland, or Greater Manchester.
However, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS, aka Scotland Yard) has not only special significant national responsibilities (like here) but thus also special resources. So, any other police unit had to relay on them ...
Edit: the MPS is such a "super force" Set wrote about in above post.
In Australia we have both federal & state police.
The state police are employees of the state, like teachers & other public sector workers.
They also have a union, like other public service employees. That union, in my own state, has been very vocal & highly politicized.
All I can say is, if an inquiry was required into allegations of police corruption, etc, here, that any proper inquiry would need to be completely independent of the government & the police, for credibility.
We have had (government/police) bodies created to investigate claims of impropriety by the police, but I think it's fair to say, many Victorians believe they have lacked credibility, due to genuine independence. That is why there have been constant calls for a royal commission (as occurred in NSW, in response to similar allegations.)
Many Victorians believe that this is the only way we will ever receive the full truth about police corruption & start the process of reform.
I'm sorry to have side-tracked the thread.
But this will give you some insight into why I am an advocate of completely independent inquiries into such matters.
I simply do not know enough about UK & Scotland Yard to give an informed opinion about whether this is relevant to the post-NOTW investigations or not.
Well informed posters from the UK are in a much better position to comment on that.
The problem you are always going to face is that of finding people with investigative skills. Even private investigators will be reluctant to take on such a job, because they, just like prosecutors, depend on a good relationship with the police. Royal Commissions work because retired judges and prosecutors who are competent to oversee an investigation, and who have sufficient experience not to be hoodwinked or sidetracked are usually chosen to head the investigation. The equivalent in the Unietd States is a "blue ribbon panel." But at the end of the day, even those folks will have to rely on someone with the skills and resources, and that means the police themselves, or someone who maintains a close relationship with them.
