Monday 27 February 2012

Charlotte Church settles £600,000 damages claim with NI over phone hacking


Singer Charlotte Church and her parents settled her phone-hacking damages action for £600,000 at the High Court today.

Charlotte Church and her mother Maria have agreed damages with News Internatinoal worth £600,000.
Charlotte Church and her mother Maria have agreed damages with News Internatinoal worth £600,000. 
Last week, lawyers for the 25-year-old and her parents, James and Maria, confirmed that terms had been agreed with News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN).
Miss Church was present at the London court for the reading of a statement resolving her claim that 33 articles in the now defunct Sunday newspaper were the product of hacking into her family's voicemails.
The settlement includes £300,000 in legal costs and a public apology.
Miss Church, 26, her mother, Maria, and her adoptive father, James, had complained that the News of the World published distressing stories about them that had originated from voicemail messages hacked by Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective jailed for phone hacking in 2007
Their case against NGN had been due for a trial at the High Court today, but Mike Brookes, who represents the family, said last week that “we have agreed terms” with NGN.
Five other outstanding cases against NGN from alleged victims of hacking, including the footballer Ryan Giggs, will also be discussed when their lawyers attend a case management hearing before High Court judge Mr Justice Vos today.
They are the only outstanding cases lodged with the High Court before a cut-off date in October last year for the first batch of claims against NGN to be dealt with by the court.
More than 50 other cases have been settled over the past two months.
Speaking during an application by the Guardian newspaper for the release of court documents relating to phone hacking last week, Mr Justice Vos said: “I’m extremely keen that the momentum of this litigation should not be lost by the fact that the cases that were set for trial are settled.
“These cases should be determined quickly.”
He told lawyers for the five other outstanding claimants that he expects an update on the cases next week, and also wants to be told about other cases that are in the pipeline, which are likely to include that of Cherie Blair, who issued a writ against NGN this week demanding damages for phone hacking.
Michael Silverleaf QC, representing NGN, said he and the barristers representing the victims had been discussing a system of fast-tracking future claims without the need for individual claims to be lodged separately.
“I’m confident we will be able to come up with a much more efficient process for dealing with the residual cases,” he said.
More than 800 likely victims of phone hacking have been identified by the Metropolitan Police after it launched Operation Weeting, a fresh investigation into phone hacking, last year.
Some, if not all, of the remaining five cases are expected to go to trial. As well as Giggs, they involve Paul Burrell, the former butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, Mary Ellen Field, a former assistant of the model Elle Macpherson, Nicola Phillips, a former assistant of the publicist Max Clifford, and the former Crimewatch co-presenter Jackie Haynes and her husband Dave Cook.
Unlike the cases which have been settled over the past two months, which were all brought against News Group Newspapers and Glenn Mulcaire, several of the remaining litigants are suing individuals at the News of the World, making their cases more complicated.
Miss Philips is to ask the Supreme Court to order Mulcaire to answer a series of questions, including whether the News of the World's news editor, Ian Edmondson, asked him to investigate her. Mr Mulcaire has so far refused to answer the questions.

Thursday 23 February 2012

Phone hacking: News of the World bosses ordered emails to be deleted


New evidence of a cover-up of phone hacking at the News of the World has been disclosed in court documents, which show the company created a policy to delete emails which could be used against it in legal proceedings.

Phone hacking: News of the World bosses ordered emails to be deleted

Charlotte Church, the singer whose hacking case had been expected to go to trial on Monday, has now settled her case. 


The documents, released to The Daily Telegraph by a High Court judge, says the policy’s stated aim was “to eliminate in a consistent manner” emails that “could be unhelpful in the context of future litigation in which a News International company is a defendant”.
Hundreds of thousands of emails were deleted “on nine separate occasions”, computers were destroyed and one senior executive told an underling to remove seven boxes of paper records relating to them from the company’s storage facility.
Clive Goodman, the royal reporter who was jailed for phone hacking in 2007, claimed during an internal employment hearing that "all of the stories" he wrote in his final two years at the News of the World "were based on phone hacking”, the court papers state.
The court document was created by lawyers for a series of phone hacking victims and is based on information they have been provided by News International’s Management and Standards Committee.
It would have been used in any High Court trials had News Group Newspapers, publisher of the now defunct News of the World, not spent millions settling cases out of court.
It includes detailed information about admissions that NGN would have made had the cases gone to trial.
The documents were released following a hearing before Mr Justice Vos at which lawyers for News Group said they were adopting a "neutral" position on whether the papers could be released, but did not raise any objections.
For the first time, it can be disclosed that one reporter, named as Journalist E, carried on intercepting voicemail messages even after the arrest in 2006 of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was later jailed.
The reporter was one of at least six News of the World journalists who hacked phones themselves.
However it is details surrounding the cover-up which are the most damning.
The papers state that from 2008 on, the News of the World had a legal obligation to “preserve all relevant evidence” of phone hacking because it had been notified of civil claims that were pending.
But in Nov 2009 it created the “Email Deletion Policy” to “eliminate in a consistent manner across News International (subject to compliance with legal and regulatory requirements) emails that could be unhelpful in the context of future litigation in which an NI company is a defendant”.
The document includes emails sent from a senior executive which says that all emails prior to January 2010 would be deleted.
A further email to a lawyer at News International asks “how are we doing with the…email deletion policy?

Cherie Blair sues News of the World over alleged phone-hacking while Tony Blair was prime minister



Cherie Blair is to sue the publisher of the News of the World after it emerged she was an alleged victim of phone-hacking while her husband was prime minister.

cherie blair
Cherie Blair is suing News Group Newspapers for alleged phone hacking
Mrs Blair filed a writ at the High Court in London on Tuesday against News Group Newspapers and Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective jailed in 2007 for voicemail interception.
Although there have been previous suspicions she was targeted by the News of the World, Mrs Blair has not, so far, been confirmed as a victim of phone hacking.
If NGN accepts that her phone was hacked, Mrs Blair would become the second figure to have become a victim while living or working in Number 10.
Earlier this month Tony Blair’s former communications chief, Alastair Campbell, was paid damages by NGN after it admitted hacking his phone.
Confirmation that Mrs Blair’s phone was also hacked would raise serious questions about security in Downing Street during Mr Blair’s tenure.
The news comes just a day after it emerged that the singer Charlotte Church and her parents were close to settling their own phone hacking case against NGN, which would have meant there were no outstanding “live” cases against the publisher.
But Mrs Blair’s claim is the first of what could be dozens of fresh cases against the Rupert Murdoch-owned company, which has already paid out more than £10 million in damages and legal fees to more than 60 victims of phone hacking.
Lawyers representing hacking victims have said that more than 70 other victims have contacted them with the intention of suing NGN after they were told by the Metropolitan Police that their voicemails had been accessed.
It means Mrs Blair’s claim could be merely the first in a new wave of hacking claims that could cost NGN millions more in payouts.
They could include Carole Caplin, Mrs Blair’s former lifestyle adviser, who has been told by police that her phone was hacked in 2002, the year it emerged that her then-boyfriend, the convicted fraudster Peter Foster, had helped Mrs Blair buy two discounted flats in Bristol.
Alastair Campbell told the Leveson Inquiry last year that he had thought Miss Caplin was leaking information to the press, but had been forced to apologise to her after discovering her phone was hacked.
He also said he believed a story about Mrs Blair becoming pregnant in 1999 could have been obtained by phone hacking.
The story appeared in the Daily Mirror but Mr Campbell said “only a tiny number of people in Downing Street knew” about the pregnancy.
Mrs Blair’s solicitor was not available for comment.

Sunday 12 February 2012

Rupert Murdoch faces revolt from angry Sun staff



Rupert Murdoch faced revolt from his own staff last night after journalists angry at the arrest of five senior colleagues accused the company of throwing them to the wolves.

Rupert Murdoch will visit Wapping this week
The 80-year-old media mogul is due to fly into Britain this week to address workers at his Wapping plant and reassure them of his commitment to his remaining UK newspaper titles.
But he is likely to receive an angry reception after five more journalists on The Sun were arrested as part of Operation Elveden – the police investigation into allegations of bribery.
The arrests early on Saturday morning were the second batch in a fortnight and sources close to the investigation have indicated that they are unlikely to be the last.
Journalists at The Sun yesterday accused the company’s Management Standards Committee (MSC), which handed a huge amount of information to detectives, of allowing a “witch-hunt” to take place.
One angry journalist said the MSC were behaving like “reptiles” in order to protect the reputation of Mr Murdoch’s parent company in the United States.
Ten senior journalists on the paper have now been arrested and bailed as detectives probe allegations that they illegally paid police officers and other public officials for information.
But staff at the paper said many of the allegations were “pathetic” and related to matters many years ago where reporters had bought drinks for contacts in the pursuit of legitimate stories.
Writing in today’s Sun, the newspaper’s influential former political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, questioned the proportion of police resources being used in the inquiry and warned that the heavy handed police tactics left it looking like a “witch hunt”.
Staff also described a highly charged atmosphere when the paper’s current editor Dominic Mohan spoke to his newsroom yesterday afternoon.
One source at Wapping said: “There is a real feeling of anger, deepening anger but also defiance about what is going on. But there is not the mood for a strike, as people are loyal to the paper but perhaps not the people who run it."
“It is looking like a witch hunt now. Some of the allegations being made against people are pathetic – reporters taking contacts out for drinks, meals and the like. The police don't really seem to understand how journalism works.
"Huge teams of counter-terrorism detectives are turning up at people's homes, going through their children's underwear drawers about things which happened seven or eight years ago. This is behaviour reminiscent of Mugabe.”
While Mr Murdoch’s attention will this week be focused on The Sun, pressure over the scandal continues to mount in the United States, where shareholders are angry at the damage the scandal is doing to the wider brand.
It has also now emerged that the Sun’s parent company News Corp could face an investigation by officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
The law allows American companies to be fined hundreds of millions of dollars for illegal activities overseas.
The phone hacking scandal at the News of the World has already cost the company more than £125 million and many investors want to see News Corp extricate itself from such a damaging association.
Mr Murdoch is now likely to face renewed pressure to overhaul how the company is run with experts suggesting he may now be forced to split his roles of chairman and chief executive.
“From a (News Corp) shareholders point of view, you want this to end and for people to move on," said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Centre for Corporate Governance at Delaware University.
"The key is to make sure it doesn't happen again," he added.
A memo to News International staff from the company’s chief executive Tom Mockridge assured staff of Mr Murdoch’s continuing determination to own and publish The Sun, which is said to be the newspaper closest to his heart.
But Tom Watson, the Labour MP and a member of the Culture and Media Select Committee, said the latest development would prove extremely difficult for News Corp to deflect.
He said: “This moves things on considerably because this is no longer just about hacking phones and it is no longer just about one newspaper.
“This goes to the very heart of corporate governance. This is now about three newspapers; the News of the World, the Times and the Sun and it involves allegations of phone hacking, email hacking and illegal payments for information.
“Inevitably it takes it to the top of the company because that is where the culture is set. That is why New York is worried because they know you cannot just blame it on individual rogue reporters.
“If what we are told is true, if illegal payments have been made to police and other public officials this is hugely damaging. I am certain there will be more arrests at The Sun.”
He added: “I think he has lost a lot of the trust of the front line staff because what you have got is a lot of very experienced and senior news reporters who now feel that they are being used as pawns in a political game to save the business.”
Mr Watson added that it had to be Mr Murdoch who bore the ultimate responsibility for what happened in his newsrooms.
Speaking on The Sunday Politics on BBC ONE he said: “It’s Rupert Murdoch who appoints bullies like Kelvin MacKenzie or small children like Dominic Mohan to run these very big institutions of national newspapers of repute. He’s responsible for the personnel that allow these things to happen and he must take responsibility for it.”

Friday 10 February 2012

Leveson Inquiry: Summary of week 11


 



On Monday Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers revealed 829 people were "likely" victims of phone-hacking by newspapers.
She is overseeing 90 police officers working on three investigations involving claims of newspaper hacking.
She told the inquiry 581 people had been contacted, 231 could not be identified and 17 had not been told of their potential involvement due to "operational reasons".
Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre reappeared before the committee twice this week - on Monday and again on Thursday.
On Monday Mr Dacre told the inquiry he was aware his paper had used private detectives but not of the extent to which his reporters had done so.
He said this method of accessing information used to be commonplace in the industry.
However he said he had never placed a story in the newspaper that he knew had come from phone hacking and was convinced it did not happen.
"I know of no cases of phone hacking," he said. "Having conducted a major internal inquiry, I am as convinced as I can be that there is no phone hacking on the Daily Mail."
He also called for a new body to deal with standards in the industry - much like an ombudsman - and said the current press card system was inadequate.
But on Wednesday Baroness Buscombe, the former chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, said the watchdog had been made a scapegoat over the phone-hacking scandal.

She told the Leveson Inquiry she had lost trust in editors during her two years in the post and felt they had not told her the truth.
On Wednesday blogger Paul Staines - who is behind the political website Guido Fawkes - detailed how he avoided legal action by using foreign web hosts.
He said this forced lawyers to chase stories in different jurisdictions.
Irish citizen Mr Staines told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics he did not consider himself bound by UK judges' orders.
"What I think you're missing is that I'm a citizen of a free republic and, since 1922, I don't have to pay attention to what a British judge orders me to do."
'Conscience clause'
Paul Dacre was back before the inquiry on Thursday. He was recalled to discuss his description of actor Hugh Grant's allegations about phone hacking at the Mail as "mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media".
Meanwhile, that same day, Sir Paul McCartney's former wife Heather Mills told the inquiry she had never authorised former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan to access her voicemail messages.
She also criticised the "postage stamp-sized apologies" which newspapers were forced to make following inaccurate stories about her.

Start Quote

Public relations expert Max Clifford used his session to confirm he received a payout from News of the World after his phone was hacked, but said the public did not care about celebrities who were affected.
He said: "What really got the British public angry was Milly Dowler and the McCanns. They didn't care about the stars, or me, having their phones hacked. Most people didn't care.
"But when they read about Milly Dowler and the McCanns, they were shocked and horrified and that had an effect."
Also appearing on Thursday was Michelle Stanistreet, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, who said journalists should have a "conscience clause" allowing them to refuse something unethical.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

Phone hacking: Met police failed to warn victims


failed to warn victims

The Met Commissioner accepted that the failure to warn victims was unlawful.
Ex-Deputy PM Lord Prescott, Labour MP Chris Bryant, ex-Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick and two others had pushed for a review.
The men, some of whom received payouts from the newspaper's owner, argued their human rights had been breached.
Outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Prescott said he would not be seeking damages from the police.
He was among dozens of people who received settlements from News International in compensation for hacking.
He received £40,000, and Mr Bryant was awarded £30,000.
Finally apologised'
The long-running case concerned the lawfulness of the original 2006 police investigation into phone hacking, and the failure to notify victims.
Lord Prescott said: "It's taken me 19 months to finally get justice. Time and again I was told by the Metropolitan Police that I had not been targeted by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. But I refused to accept this was the case.
"Thanks to this judicial review, the Metropolitan Police has finally apologised for its failure to properly investigate, and inform victims, of the criminal acts of phone hacking committed by the News of the World."
The other two applicants in the case were Ben Jackson, the former assistant to the actor Jude Law, and an applicant known only as HJK.
BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman said Tuesday's order represents a defeat for the Metropolitan police, and an admission that there were flaws in the initial 2006 investigation in failing to notify potential victims of phone hacking.
Victims identified
The Met Police are re-examining the entire case dating back to 2006, when the News of the World's former royal editor, Clive Goodman, and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for hacking into the mobile phone voicemails of royal aides.
Since then, a series of inquiries and legal cases have been exploring just how widespread the practice was, and the newspaper was shut by its owner News International.
Operation Weeting is looking at allegations of hacking by News of the World into private voicemails.
The ruling comes a day after police confirmed that they believed 829 people were "likely" victims of phone-hacking by newspapers.
Appearing at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said 581 of those people had been contacted.
However, 231 could not be identified, and 17 had not been told due to "operational reasons".

Sunday 5 February 2012

Police investigating allegations of email hacking at The Times


The Metropolitan Police are investigating allegations of email hacking at the Times Newspaper, sources have revealed.

Labour MP Tom Watson and editer of The Times James Harding
Labour MP Tom Watson (left) and editer of The Times, James Harding
It is understood the investigation relates to claims that a former reporter at the Murdoch owned newspaper hacked into the emails of an anonymous police blogger.
The police investigation follows a complaint by Labour MP Tom Watson, who wrote to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers urging Scotland Yard to look into allegations of hacking.
The Times editor James Harding and News International chief executive Tom Mockridge have both given evidence to the Leveson Inquiryacknowledging that a reporter at the newspaper had admitted hacking an email.
The reporter was later named as 28-year-old Patrick Foster, who accessed the email account of Richard Horton, a police officer who blogged under the name Nightjack.
Mr Foster was later dismissed from the newspaper for an unrelated matter.
Mr Horton was outed in 2009 after The Times fought an injunction in the High Court in order to reveal his identity.
Last week James Harding, editor of The Times wrote to the Leveson Inquiry admitting for the first time that the newspaper had failed to tell the High Court they new about the hacking before challenging the injunction.
When Mr Harding appeared before the inquiry earlier in January he only admitted that managers knew about an incident of email hacking but did not name Mr Foster or give details of the story.
Following his evidence The Times published an article admitting that Mr Foster had admitted hacking Mr Horton's email account.
Mr Watson’s letter to the Metropolitan Police, which was also sent to the Attorney General, said: “It is clear that a crime has been committed – illicit hacking of personal emails.
“A journalist and unnamed managers failed to report the crime to their proprietor or the police. I must ask that you investigate computer hacking at The Times. In so doing you will also be able to establish whether perjury or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice have also occurred.”
The Metropolitan Police has set up Operation Tuleta to examine allegations of email hacking by journalists.
The investigation is separate to Operation Weeting which is looking into allegations of phone hacking

Friday 3 February 2012

Anonymous 'intercept FBI and Scotland Yard phone call'






Hacking network Anonymous has released a recording of a conference call between the FBI and UK police in which they discuss efforts against hacking.
The conversation covers the tracking of Anonymous and other splinter groups, dates of planned arrests and details of evidence held by police.
Anonymous also published an email, apparently from the FBI, showing the email addresses of call participants.
The FBI confirmed the intercept and said it was hunting those responsible.
"The information was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained. A criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible," it said in a statement.
British police at Scotland Yard said they were working on a statement.
A comment on one of the Twitter accounts linked to Anonymous,AnonymousIRC, said: "The FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now."
Correspondents say the release of the phone call and email addresses will be highly embarrassing for the authorities.
Greek attack
According to the alleged email, the 17-minute phone call took place on 17 January. It was unclear how Anonymous had managed to obtain the recording.

In the call, British and American voices, said to be those of police and FBI agents, discuss the names of some of the people they were tracking and plans for legal action.
The email was sent to law enforcement officials in the US, UK, Sweden, Ireland and other countries, inviting them to "discuss the on-going investigations related to Anonymous, Lulzsec, Antisec, and other associated splinter groups".
Usernames are included but some of the real names of people being investigated appear to have been bleeped out.
Among those discussed are two British men, Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis, who are accused of being behind cyber attacks in the US and UK.
The police also refer to a 15-year-old who is alleged to have been behind a hack of online gaming site Steam, where the identities and credit card details of thousands of users were accessed.
A Twitter user going by the same name has since posted online he has not yet been arrested.
One of the British voices on the recording says UK police have made mistakes in previous investigations.
Anonymous is a loose collective of hackers, anarchists and pranksters who have targeted the websites of a range of governments, companies, law enforcement agencies and individuals in recent years.
Also on Friday, hackers operating under the Anonymous name took over the website of Greece's justice ministry, prompting officials to take the site down.
Hackers said the action was a protest against Greece's signing of a global copyright treaty and the government's handling of the economic crisis.
The website was replaced with a video of a figure wearing the symbolic white mask of Anonymous supporters, saying: "Democracy was given birth in your country but you have killed it."