Phone hacking and the Murdoch rot

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Doc Science mentioned in passing that we need more political content here, and, as I probably know less than anyone of the other front pagers about the current US political zeitgeist, in the best traditions of blogging, it stands to reason that I should be the one to deliver.

As I mentioned in the comments, my attention has been absolutely taken by the News of the World/phone hacking scandal in the UK. Your one stop shop is the Guardian page on this. (as a side note, the Guardian, with its live blogs of breaking events, and podcasts and integration of video talks, seems to me like what the future of media should be if we are lucky, so if you'd rather talk about that, go for it)

I've heard it said that the story was initially treated like a parochial concern, but has recently began to catch fire in the US, but I'm not sure how to gauge that. As much as I'd like to be wrong, I'm afraid that the Atlantic ocean will provide a sufficient strong enough firewall, so that Murdoch's American empire will be untouched. I also think that News of the World seems to have trafficked more tittilating revelations about folks. The wingnut right in the US flirted with this (remember the Frost family's granite countertops?), but it seems not to have caught hold, though I may be wrong. 

One other point, a number of people have noted that New Labour was equally complicit in the rise of Murdoch, with one writer pointing out that Tony Blair's decision to support Bush in Iraq was given the final push by Murdoch. I don't know how true that is (one problem with the Guardian for me is the division between news reporting and editorial opinion is blurred, or at least not clear to me.), but I think that one reason why New Labour was complicit is that Murdoch appears to be a person who is not interested in which side he is on, as long as it is the winning side.

Anyway, what's the scandal look like from where you are sitting?

33 thoughts on “Phone hacking and the Murdoch rot”

  1. Most of the Murdoch audience in the US probably has no idea about the connection between Murdoch and his US publications. At least in the UK the actions caused a scandal. I’m afraid that here, it would remain well under the radar except in certain blogs, Media Matters, etc.

  3. Not really visible. Note that both the Wall Street Journal and Fox News are Murdoch organizations.
    The pair chatted behind closed doors as a former New York cop made the 9/11 hacking claim. He alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead.–http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/h-c-k-in-in-usa.html

  4. I’m one of the USans wondering if News Corp. is phone-hacking on this side of the pond.
    I haven’t been able to find out what this hacking consisted of despite reading a bunch of articles. This piece suggests three possibilities: (1) dictionary attacks where you try common pass codes, (2) using caller ID spoofing services in combination with a social engineering attack to reset a voicemail pass code, and (3) using a spoofing service to directly gain access to (very poorly designed) voice mail systems without a passcode.
    I’d bet that (1) was quite effective; it won’t necessarily get you any one particular phone, but getting even two or three in the royal household is a win. (2) seems unlikely because once you execute the attack, the original owner can no longer retrieve their voicemails and it leaves an audit trail which looks real suspicious. I’m having trouble believing that anyone designed a voicemail system stupid enough to be fooled by (3) but the FC article claims that AT&T did.
    Most of these attacks would work equally well on both sides of the pond I’d guess. They’re all dirt cheap requiring no special technical knowledge. Part of the problem here is that voicemail authentication tends to be garbage, in part because phone companies suck and in part because making strong authentication work in practice for the general public is a really hard problem that we don’t know how to solve.

  5. Quite depressing how a good chunk of the Met seems bought off and the fact that this was swept under the rug until the Guardian essentially forced the police into action, and the public rightly reviled the fact that a murder victim and family were further victimized by these scumbags. As an aside, the Dowling killer was a serial killer, but it is almost impossible to find reporting of the facts of the case that led to the conviction.
    It seems that News Int will still be allowed to buy BSkyB (or they are praying for such). If this goes through, you will know how toothless the Murdoch’s UK puppet state has become.

  6. Dr Science,
    You’re not alone in wondering that. Be it said that the Mirror and the Mail are not the most reliable organs, and we can’t at this stage rule out the possibility that their source is doing this for reasons not entirely honest.
    Nevertheless, I suspect the idea that Murdoch’s crew were hacking the relatives of 9/11 victims will not go down well in the US.

  7. …Murdoch appears to be a person who is not interested in which side he is on, as long as it is the winning side.
    His English rags are anti-German*, his (aborted**) attempts in Germany were anti-English. He is what we used to call a “vaterlandsloser Geselle”, i.e. a person without any loyalty to any country.
    *Germans are regularly depicted (literally) as Nazis that still have not gotten over losing WW2 and are looking for a rematch (with the EU as their tool).
    **territory already taken by the Springer empire. BILD still rules supreme.

  8. Nelson Chaney: All I know is that this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.
    Frank Hackett: We’re not a respectable network. We’re a whorehouse network, and we have to take whatever we can get.
    Nelson Chaney: Well, I don’t want any part of it. I don’t fancy myself the president of a whorehouse.
    Frank Hackett: That’s very commendable of you, Nelson. Now sit down. Your indignation is duly noted; you can always resign tomorrow.

  9. Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU… WILL… ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that… perfect world… in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
    Howard Beale: Why me?
    Arthur Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
    Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.
    Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

  10. Narrator: That evening, Howard Beale went on the air to preach the corporate cosmology of Arthur Jensen.

  11. FWIWI, there’s a special Commons vote day after tomorrow (Wednesday 13th July).
    This is a day where the Opposition set the business for the House, so even if the vote is carried, it doesn’t bind the government to action. This should make it easier for Conservative and LibDem MPs to vote with Labour – providing Ed Milliband doesn’t try to pull a partisan trick and turn it into a no-confidence vote against the government.
    The motion before the Commons will be, so I’ve heard: whether the BSkyB takeover announcement should be delayed pending the police inquiries. Guardian and BBC.
    I’ve written to my MP already (Labour, and definitely more socialist than New Labour) and got back an assurance that he will vote for Ed Milliband’s motion, but I already knew that – I wrote because I wanted to say that from everything being said, this is a tremendous opportunity for a crossparty vote on issues that MPs of all political complexions can agree on – that the phonehacking was unlawful and should be investigated by an independent judge-led inquiry, that the BSkyB sale must be delayed pending the inquiry, and that even if the inquiry clears News International, the sale must still be referred to the Competition Commission.
    That, I honestly think, is something that most MPs of all parties can agree to – and I really hope that the debate sticks to those points, rather than tries to score partisan points on David Cameron for hiring Andy Cowling and dining with Rebekah Brooks. That would be fun, but it won’t get us where we need to be with Murdoch.
    I’ve said the vote doesn’t bind the government, and it doesn’t, but if a significant proportion of Conservative MPs vote with the Opposition on this issue, it would be very hard for David Cameron to just shrug it off and go “No matter what, I still want Rupert to have BSkyB.” (A sale which, a recent poll discovered, 70% of the British public are against.)

  12. The wingnut right in the US flirted with this (remember the Frost family’s granite countertops?)
    or Paul Ryan’s wine selection.

  13. Jes, nice to see you and thanks for the info. One of the things that several of the pieces pointed out was that New Labour was rather coy in complaining about Murdoch when they were just as responsible for his rise. Any insights into the split between Labor and New Labor? Who are the people to watch? You suggested Milliband might try to pull a fast one, but would turning it into a no-confidence vote be simply self aggrandizement, or is Milliband part of New Labour or is there some other angle to this?
    It’s interesting to me that the UK seems to have weaker laws against phone hacking, which actually created the conditions for this massive reaction to NotW and Murdoch to occur, because phone hacking against politicians, celebrities and the royal family were treated as almost the price of doing business, but potentially impeding the Milly Dowler investigation was the straw that broke the camel’s back, though I may be misinterpreting the forces involved here.

  14. I’ve actually seen a fair amount on this. But then, I read The Economist, including the blogs, which gets me rather more British news than most.
    I, too, have wondered how much of this Murdoch’s publications (and Fox) have been doing over here. And I agree that doing it to, for example, the families of 9/11 victims would definitely be an issue. Once someone in the MSM brought it up. (On the other hand, doing it to celebrities probably wouldn’t get too many people worked up. There is too much perception, right or wrong, that most of them court that kind of exposure.)

  16. (1) dictionary attacks where you try common pass codes

    Or (1a), related: knowing the “default” or “remote reset” codes for one brand of answering machine or another. Most answering machines are sold with a default password and no embedded change policy, and it’s fairly trivial to research what those defaults are. Most people never change them.
    Mostly irrelevant to VM, though defaults exist in some of those systems too.
    It’s also worth noting that for most of these systems, it’s not even anything as sophisticated as a dictionary attack–the codes are numeric, often four or five digits, and there are a very finite number of possibilities for a brute force attack.

  17. I wonder if there’s any way to track down phone hacking on this side of The Pond by looking at story types. That is, would you UKans say that phone hacking was used or correlated with particular sorts of “news” stories?
    hmm. Since they did it for Milly Dowler, if *I* were, say, the FBI (or Media Matters), I’d wonder about phone hacking of, say, the victims of Seung-Hui Cho.
    Now that I think about, I’m pretty sure what Target A would have been: everyone around Terri Schiavo. I don’t remember the details, but were there rumors/stories floating around based on cell phone/voicemail conversations with any of the principals?
    Basically, if Michael Schiavo’s phone wasn’t hacked, then it’s not been done much in the US.

  18. How do voice mailboxes work in the UK? Here in Japan, unless you pay extra, voice messages are deleted after 48 hours. Phones have the ability to download the messages to be stored on the cell phone, so if something memorable were to ever come thru, I could keep it.
    I remember that after 9-11, there were a number of last calls, and at some point, 6 months or more, the phone company was going to delete them and people whose messages they were objected. Is the UK system like that, where the phone company stores your voice mail for a relatively extended period of time?
    I imagine that celebs, politicians and sports figures might have a different set up as they might use various schemes to screen people. Still, it seems awfully plebeian to be ringing your answer machine and punching in a 4 digit code to get your messages.

  19. A morning devoted to reading about this rather than preparing for class. But if I had been preparing, I would have missed this
    To support his case, Mr. Grant reminded viewers that Chris Bryant, a member of Parliament who pressed Ms. Brooks, a former editor of The News of the World, into admitting that the paper had paid the police for information, during a hearing in 2003, was the subject of tabloid mockery not long after.
    A photograph Mr. Bryant had taken of himself, in his underwear, and sent to a man he met through a gay dating Web site, was obtained and published later that year by The Mail on Sunday, a rival tabloid that has also been accused of underhanded tactics. The photograph was used by The Sun, another News Corporation tabloid formerly edited by Ms. Brooks, as recently as 2008, in an article about Mr. Bryant’s political career that referred to him as the “gay pants MP Bryant.”
    Last week, Mr. Bryant called for an emergency debate in the House of Commons on the News of the World scandal. In an interview with London’s Evening Standard, Mr. Bryant said that the last time he met Ms. Brooks, a few years ago, “She came up to me and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Bryant, it’s after dark – shouldn’t you be on Clapham Common?” The common has a reputation as a place where gay men meet for casual sex. According to Mr. Bryant, the English soap opera star Ms. Brooks was then married to, Ross Kemp, objected and said to his wife: “Shut up, you homophobic cow.”

  20. I’ve read some comments to the effect that Murdoch ought to be allowed to go ahead and do the merger that’s in the works. Because he’ll soon be gone, and his sons won’t have the savvy or ability to hold on to the new possession.

  21. I’ve read some comments to the effect that Murdoch ought to be allowed to go ahead and do the merger that’s in the works. Because he’ll soon be gone, and his sons won’t have the savvy or ability to hold on to the new possession.
    Yeah, because that’s worked so well in the past. The next generation of the Murdoch clan may or may not have their father’s savvy and ability, but they sure as hell will have huge amounts of money and power. Dismissing them as harmless looks to me as about as sensible as dismissing George W. Bush as not a problem because he’s not as smart or able as his father.
    No. Judge-led independent inquiry into the phonehacking: hopefully, divestment of News International’s TV ownership as not “fit and proper” entity to own TV broadcasting in the UK. I personally think we should just have to point at Fox News and Glenn Beck and go “See?”

  22. “Because, if Michael Schiavo’s phone wasn’t hacked, then it’s not been done in the U.S.”
    FOX News and Republican politicians used the same old technology on Mr Schiavo as they did on the piteous Ms. Schiavo:
    Mind-reading from a malign distance.
    I do believe though that Terri Schiavo exchanged numerous late-night phone calls with Newt Gingrich, who encouraged her to get off her duff and find a job.

  23. Jes, fists, it is really great to have you back here commenting. I hope you’ll stay 😉
    Second, do you have any sense for how much people in the UK appreciate just how…perverse Fox has gotten in the US? If you pulled a random person off the street and showed them a Glenn Beck video, would they believe that he had a huge national media perch rather than caring doctors at an institution? I have family overseas and sometimes it has been a struggle to convey just how…odd things can get here. There is an assumption of normality that can be difficult to pierce.

  24. Ms. Schiavo, if alive today, would be riveted to the FOX News coverage of Eric Cantor demanding huge cuts in Medicaid in exchange for not euthanizing the U.S. Government.
    As to Murdoch, as with Al Capone, I’ll settle for getting him on a technicality, but I think the damage the ruthless get has done to western civilization requires some lengthy and vicious physical torment.
    I mean, besides watching reruns of Glenn Beck demonizing the Jews.

  25. @ Posted by: Pinko Punko | July 10, 2011 at 11:34 PM:
    As you mention, it now seems obvious that Scotland Yard’s investigation of the original hacking scandal was a bit lackluster: it now turns out there was a good reason why (well, not a good reason, but an explicable one) –

  26. This morning on NPR I heard part of a report — possibly from BBC World Service, I don’t know; everyone had a UK accent, at least — on the state of the various scandals and investigations. They were saying that The Sun got a copy of Gordon Brown’s son’s medical records, and said that this “probably was not illegal”. Huh?!??
    In the US since 1996 medical privacy has been pretty strictly protected (at least in theory). There would be *no way* that obtaining and publishing a child’s medical record would not be illegal. Doesn’t the UK have a similar law?!?

  28. Doctor Science: In the US since 1996 medical privacy has been pretty strictly protected (at least in theory). There would be *no way* that obtaining and publishing a child’s medical record would not be illegal. Doesn’t the UK have a similar law?!?
    What the Sun claims happened is that “a member of the public” whose child also has cystic fibrosis, was aware that Gordon Brown’s son had cystic fibrosis, and that member of the public leaked the information to the Sun in, you know, a public-spirited kind of way. (Press Gazette) The claim that this was purely done out of public-spiritedness may backfire if it turns out that the Sun offered or provided a payment to the leaker.
    I reserve judgement as to whether the Sun’s story is true, but if it is true, then it may well not be illegal.
    It would be very, very illegal if anyone employed by or volunteering at a healthcare service, NHS or charity, had leaked the information about the Brown kid. But if you’re a parent, and you are attending events or education or in-house services for parents of kids with cystic fibrosis, and you see Gordon Brown or Sarah Brown there too and it’s clear they’re attending because they’re parents of a patient… then it’s probably not illegal for you to give that information to the media. (It’s unethical, immoral, and indecent, and might lay you open to a civil suit for damages, but it’s probably not criminal.)
    If The Sun obtained the information legally, it’s legal for them to publish it. If the family of the minor child then complain to the Press Complaints Commission that the paper has breached the minor child’s privacy, the PCC can tell The Sun they have to publish an apology. Fat lot of good that’d do, I hear you say, and you’re right, of course.
    Particularly as The Sun might just decide (and I gather they did, given what happened to Gordon Brown in the news since then, after he complained to them) that they’re going to launch an all-out attack on you for not taking it nicely that they exposed the intimate details of your child’s health issues. Gordon Brown got pilloried as an unpleasant, shouty, grumpy figure of fun in Murdoch outlets, and other tabloids picked up on it, and in 2010, though no one much liked the Tories or thought well of the LibDems, Labour lost the election. And maybe one reason was because Gordon Brown had the effrontery to complain about The Sun publishing the cystic fibrosis story.
    That pattern of events, now the backstory of leaks is coming out, is pretty commonplace. That’s why I think the Murdoch clan ought to be ruled not “fit and proper” people to have ownership in the media in the UK.

  29. @ Jesurgislac:
    It’s unethical, immoral, and indecent, and might lay you open to a civil suit for damages, but it’s probably not criminal.
    Thank you, Jes for laying out the (previously operative) rules for tabloid journalism in the UK! Though the main bright spot (IMO) seems to be that the “criminal” bit – at least as actively pursued – seems to be being highlighted a bit more of late…
    But maybe you can enlighten us benighted colonials as to one persistent question regarding the whole Murdoch-Empire-Hacking-Scandal which has been bothering us (well, me, mainly):
    What, exactly, is the big power-relationship deal which seems to given the gutter press a virtual whip-hand over the UK political Establishment? I mean, over here, we have the “Fox News demographic” – ignorant yahoos though they may be – who have a nontrivial effect (a serious, if static, minority bloc) on political discourse. But it just seems. from the reportage on the current scandals, that most of the UK Establishment defer to the tabloid Press to a much greater extent than their equivalents on this side of the pond.

  30. But it just seems. from the reportage on the current scandals, that most of the UK Establishment defer to the tabloid Press to a much greater extent than their equivalents on this side of the pond.
    Fox News. The Washington Times. Rush Limbaugh. Laura Schlessinger. Matt Drudge. Jerry Falwell. Oral Roberts. Oh yeah.

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