Phone hacking by news organizations became the subject of scandals that raised concerns about illegal acquisition of confidential information by news media organizations in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia between 1995 and 2012. The scandal had been simmering since 2002 but broke wide open in July 2011 with the disclosure that a murdered teenage girl's mobile phone had been hacked by a newspaper looking for a story. The scandals involved multiple organizations, and include the News of the World royal phone hacking scandal, the News International phone hacking scandal, the 2011 News Corporation scandals, and the Metropolitan Police role in the News International phone hacking scandal.
By 2002, the practice of publications using private investigators to acquire confidential information was widespread in the United Kingdom, with some individuals using illegal methods. Information was allegedly acquired by accessing private voicemail accounts, hacking into computers, making false statements to officials to obtain confidential information, entrapment, blackmail, burglaries, theft of mobile phones and making payments to officials in exchange for confidential information. The kind of information acquired illegally included private communication, physical location of individuals, bank account records, medical records, phone bills, tax files, and organisational strategies.
Individuals involved in the scandal included victims, perpetrators, investigators, solicitors, and responsible oversight officials. Victims of these illegal methods included celebrities, politicians, law enforcement officials, solicitors, and ordinary citizens. As this illegal activity became apparent, arrests were made and some convictions achieved. Upon learning their privacy had been violated, some victims retained solicitors and filed suit against news media companies and their agents, in some cases receiving substantial financial payments for violation of privacy. Successful suits and publicity from investigative news articles led to further disclosures, including the names of more victims, more documentary evidence of wrongdoing, admissions of wrongdoing, and related payments. Allegations were made of poor judgement evidence destruction, and coverup by news media executives and law enforcement officials. As a result, new investigations were initiated including some in the US and Australia, and several senior executives and police officials resigned. There were also significant commercial consequences of the scandal.
There was evidence that illegal acquisition of confidential information continued at least into 2010. Solicitors representing victims were targeted for surveillance by a news media organisation being sued as recently as 2011. Illegal payments by news media agents to public officials continued into 2012.
Early investigations (1990s–2005) During this period, illegal acquisition of confidential information for developing news stories was widespread. News media journalists, editors and executives, along with private investigators, public officials, and police officers, all benefited from the practice. Little was done to inhibit it.
Victims
In 2000, eight-year-old Sarah Payne was murdered by a paedophile. News of the World and its then editor, Rebekah Brooks (née Wade), championed the campaign led by Sarah's mother for legislation to notify parents if a child sex offender lived nearby. Brooks gave Sarah's mother a mobile phone to facilitate communication. The phone was subsequently hacked by an agent of News of the World.
Six months later, Sir Paul McCartney left a voicemail message for his then girlfriend, Heather Mills, trying to work things out. Mirror Group journalists hacked the phone to listen in. Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror at the time, later acknowledged listening to it.
When teenager Milly Dowler disappeared in 2002, agents of News of the World hacked into her mobile phone messages hoping to acquire information they could use for a story. Surrey police were reportedly advised of this hacking at the time, but no action was taken.
Journalists working at News of the World after Andy Coulson became chief editor in 2003 claimed that Coulson talked freely about using the "dark arts," including phone hacking, and that "everybody knew. The office cat knew." There were thousands of phone hacking victims during this period from all walks of life. The Metropolitan Police Service and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) accumulated huge amounts of evidence that confidential information was being obtained illegally for use by news organisations including News Corporation's subsidiary News International (News of the World, The Sun, The Times), Mirror Group Newspapers (Daily Mirror), Express Newspapers (Daily Star, Daily Express), and others. But almost a decade was to pass before dogged investigative reporting by The Guardian newspaper generated public outrage over the invasions of privacy that had been covered up through wilful blindness, intimidation, and suppression of evidence by news organisations, law enforcement organisations, and politicians.
During 2003 and 2004 in the United States, someone at News Corporation's advertising subsidiary, News America Marketing, repeatedly hacked into a computer at rival FLOORgraphics to obtain confidential product and contract information with which to put FLOORgraphics at a disadvantage in a brutal competitive battle. The FBI initiated an investigation, but little effort was put into it. In 2006 an editor of News of the World reportedly hacked into the computer of a British Army intelligence officer in Northern Ireland who had responsibility for contact with an agent embedded in the Provisional IRA and potentially at high risk for assassination if his whereabouts became known. Again, law enforcement officials did little to investigate the charges at the time.
Before public outrage forced rigorous investigations, evidence that several thousand UK citizens including celebrities, Members of Parliament, murder victims, their relatives, or anyone else who happened to be nearby, had been victims of phone hacking remained for many years consigned unexamined by officers of the Metropolitan Police Service to storage in garbage bags in the bowels of New Scotland Yard.
Operation Nigeria Private investigators and their sources who were illegally providing confidential information to News of the World were also engaged in a variety of other illegal activities. Between 1999 and 2003, several were convicted for crimes including drug theft and distribution, child pornography, planting evidence, corruption, and perverting the course of justice. Jonathan Rees and his partner Sid Fillery, a former police officer, were also under suspicion for the ax murder of a third private investigator. The Met undertook Operation Nigeria and tapped Rees' telephone. A large quantity of evidence was accumulated that Rees was purchasing information from improper sources and that Alex Marunchak of News of the World was paying as much as £150,000 a year for it. The operation was discontinued and Rees arrested when he was heard planning to plant false evidence to assist a client. He was convicted in 2000 and sent to prison for five years. Fillery was convicted for child pornography in 2003.
Instead of distancing themselves from the suspected murderers, News of the World editors began, in June 2002, surveillance on one of the Met police officers investigating the murder. Intended or not, this had the potential for undermining the murder investigation of News of the World sources. Fillery reportedly used his relationship with Alex Marunchak to arrange for private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, then doing work for News of the World, to obtain confidential information about Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook. This included his home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. Surveillance of Cook is also reported to have involved physically following him and his young children. It included attempts to access his voicemail and that of his wife, and possibly attempts to send a "Trojan horse" email to try to steal information from his computer. Documents reportedly in the possession of the Scotland Yard shows that "Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, assistant editor at News of the World and a close friend of Marunchak." It also appeared that attempts had been made to open letters that had been left in Cook's external postbox. The Metropolitan Police Service handled this apparent attempt by agents of News of the World to interfere with a murder inquiry of the newspapers private investigators by having informal discussions with Rebekah Brooks, then editor for News of the World. "Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Dick Fedorcio, Director of Public Affairs and Internal Communication for the Met who had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the newspaper."
No one was charged with illegal acquisition of confidential information as a result of Operation Nigeria, even though the Met reportedly collected hundreds of thousands of incriminating documents during the investigations into Jonathan Rees over his links with corrupt officers." The Guardian's detailed expose of 2002 did not impel anyone at the Met or in public office to act. Upon Rees' release from prison in 2005, he immediately resumed his private investigative work of profitably supplying confidential information to News of the World, where Andy Coulson by that time had succeeded Rebekah Brooks as editor.
Operation Motorman Many private investigators in addition to Rees were plying the lucrative trade in illegally acquired confidential information. John Boyall's speciality was acquiring information from confidential databases. His assistant was Glenn Mulcaire until the autumn of 2001, when News of the World's assistant editor, Greg Miskiw, attracted Mulcaire away by giving him a full-time contract to do work for the newspaper. Boyall eventually attracted the attention of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), an authority acting independently of the police in the public interest to uphold data privacy rights for individuals. The ICO raided Boyall's premises in November 2002. Documents seized there led the ICO to raid the premises of yet another private investigator, Steve Whittamore under Operation Motorman. Documents from this raid included "more than 13,000 requests for confidential information from newspapers and magazines." These established that confidential information was illegally acquired from telephone companies, the Driving & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and the Police National Computer. "Media, especially newspapers, insurance companies and local authorities chasing council tax arrears all appear in the sales ledger" of the agency. Whittamore's network of information gatherers gave him access to confidential records at telephone companies, banks, post offices, hotels, theatres, and prisons, including BT Group, Crédit Lyonnais, Goldman Sachs, Hang Seng Bank, Glen Parva prison, and Stocken prison. Some 305 journalists working for at least 30 publications were found to be purchasing confidential information from private investigators.