News of the World Phone Hacking Update

As police interview a former News of the World journalist who claimed Andy Coulson asked him to hack phones, the last week has seen the pressure increase on both the newspaper and David Cameron's Director of Communications. On Thursday the 9th of September House of Commons debate was the site of a series of robust attacks on press intrusion - for example see Tom Watson MP's forthright (but on the whole characteristic) contribution below:




The claim that MPs have so far refrained from coming down on press intrusion with too much vigour for fear of becoming victims themselves is replicated elsewhere, for example in a Guardian article reporting the claim of former Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price:

Price told Channel 4 News last night that four members of the committee had considered asking the serjeant at arms to issue a warrant forcing Brooks to attend. He said: "We could have used the nuclear option. We decided not to, I think to some extent because of what I was told at the time by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I know was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, called her back, subpoenaed her, they would go for us. [This] meant effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them and I think that's part of the reason we didn't do it." Watson told Channel 4 News that News International had further interfered by asking Downing Street to persuade him to tone down his questioning. "A [former Labour] cabinet minister has confirmed to me this week that News International talked to my former colleagues in No 10 Downing Street to ask them whether I would withdraw my aggressive line of questioning … I felt very frightened and intimidated." Watson added that he was told that Brooks vowed to destroy him after he led the Labour coup that persuaded Tony Blair to resign. "A very senior News International journalist told me at the Labour party conference in 2006, in the early hours of the morning, that his editor would never forgive me for resigning as a minister in Tony Blair's government and that she would pursue me for the rest of my political career until I was destroyed."

News: Metropolitan Police to Look at new Evidence in News of the World Phone Tapping Case

From BBC News: The London Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they will look at new evidence which has come to light recently in relation to the News of the World phone hacking case in which stories were obtained by hacking the phones of the Royal Family, celebrities and politicians.

This announcement follows claims in the New York Times at the weekend that the practice of phone hacking at the newspaper was far more widespread than so far recognised. Furthermore the detail that the then editor Andy Coulson apparantly knew about, condoned and even requested phone hacking is likely to continue to be a focal point to the story due to his current role as a close advisor to David Cameron and Director of Communications - the News of the World continue to maintain that only one employee is ever known to have been hacking people's phones and that he did so without the knowledge of his employers. The NYT story presents a very different picture:

But interviews with more than a dozen former reporters and editors at News of the World present a different picture of the newsroom. They described a frantic, sometimes degrading atmosphere in which some reporters openly pursued hacking or other improper tactics to satisfy demanding editors. Andy Coulson, the top editor at the time, had imposed a hypercompetitive ethos, even by tabloid standards. One former reporter called it a “do whatever it takes” mentality. The reporter was one of two people who said Coulson was present during discussions about phone hacking. Coulson ultimately resigned but denied any knowledge of hacking.

News of the World was hardly alone in accessing messages to obtain salacious gossip. “It was an industrywide thing,” said Sharon Marshall, who witnessed hacking while working at News of the World and other tabloids. “Talk to any tabloid journalist in the United Kingdom, and they can tell you each phone company’s four-digit codes. Every hack on every newspaper knew this was done.”

Comment: UK Gov Plans Shelved

The shelving of plans for the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) has been reported in a number of different ways. According to the Independent this was effectively 'a cancellation of the Big Brother database' while the BBC reported that the UK surveillance plan was 'to go ahead'. In this confusion Slashdot resorted to the headline 'In the UK, Big Brother Recedes and Advances'.

I think the Register has this one right. The post makes three points:

1) Next years general election (probably to take place in May) makes this a bad time to bring forward legislation that might provoke negative headlines. (Henry Porter has a nice point about the timing as well: with all the recent column inches covering the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, proposing big increases in surveillance invites comparisons with the Stasi all too easily).

2) Internet Service Providers, whose cooperation is needed for the scheme, are currently resistent. Before proceeding, government has to convince them of its merits and feasibility.

3) The players who want this (GCHQ, SOCA, ACPO, the Security Service, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency and the Met) are not going away anytime soon:

Note that GCHQ and friends will still be around after the next election, as will their demands for IMP.

Ever the political pragmatists, the Tories know this well, and the section of shadow justice minister Dominic Grieve's recent speech on reversing the rise of the surveillance state was notably soft on IMP.

He said a Conservative government would submit the proposals to the Information Commissioner's Office to assess their impact on privacy. The ICO has already said it believes the case for mass surveillance of the internet has not been made.

News: UK Gov Plans to Snoop on Internet and Mobile Use Shelved

From the Guardian: a previously mooted £2bn surveillance project for keeping tabs of all British citizens' email, internet use, mobile calls and texts, is to be left out of the upcoming Queens Speech, laying out the legislative plans for the coming year:

The Home Office ditched plans earlier this year for a central database tracking all phone, text, email and internet use. Instead ministers want internet service providers and phone companies to store this data for access by police and security services. The data includes who contacts whom, when, where and how – but not the content of what was said or written.

The Home Office summary of the responses to its consultation published shows that the internet and phone industry want assurances that they will be compensated for the costs involved and also fear technical problems.

News: Romanian Constitutional Court Strikes Down Data Retention Directive

From EDRI: The Romanian Consitutional Court (CCR) has declared the Data Retention Directive incompatible with the Romanian constitution. The case was initiated by a Romanian NGO, the Civil Society Commissariat, who sued its mobile phone company for retaining traffic data according to the new regulations, forcing a CCR ruling on the law's constitutionality:

CCR has accepted the motion for law's unconstitutionality through decision 1258/2009, based on the breach of article 28 of the Romanian Constitution, which stipulates the secrecy of correspondence. Other articles invoked were articles 25, 26 and 30 which deal with freedom of movement, privacy and freedom of expression respectively.

How to Use Surveillance

Via privacydigest.com - there's an interesting National Public Radio story on the investigation that has led to terrorism charges against Najibullah Zazi, a Denver area shuttle bus driver. It's being claimed that this is a textbook case for showing how surveillance techniques are used in successful cases:

Officials say FBI agents in Denver and New York had been tracking Zazi for some time — and experts analyzing the case say the way law enforcement gathered evidence against Zazi and possible co-conspirators may be a textbook case of how to conduct a terrorism investigation. The FBI used a blend of wiretaps and subpoenas, search warrants and local police, among other things, to build its case.

"I think what's striking about the Zazi case is not so much that new tools were being used, but that old tools were being used in a comprehensive fashion," says Sam Rascoff, who used to work terrorism cases for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit. "And that they were being stitched together in a thoughtful, strategic way, so that one tool naturally gave way to another."