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Hacks and hackers hit the headlines
Tapping phones used to require the dexterity of a cat burglar.
Offices had to be broken into under the cover of night. Bugging devices had to be surreptitiously placed in handsets. Then conspicuous types, dressed as engineers or telephone repair men, had to camp out in vans hoping to decipher illicit conversations amid crackle and feedback.
Not any more. When News of the World reporter Clive Goodwin and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire found themselves in court in 2007 charged with hacking into phones used by royal aides, the ease of the scam became clearly apparent.
It was Mulcaire, armed with a raft of numbers, who had called the relevant mobile phone networks. Posing as a credit controller he politely asked the operator to reset the security pin number to default. Within a matter of seconds they had been granted access to hundreds of messages and a potentially endless resource of stories.
At the time, the News of the World insisted it was a one-off and Goodman, who was sentenced to three months, was painted as a maverick. If yesterday's revelations in the Guardian, which alleged the newspaper had at one time or another hacked into 3,000 mobile phones are correct, it seems someone wasn't quite telling the truth.
The reported scale of the tapping failed to surprise Peter Burden. Last year in his book News of the World? Fake Sheikhs and Royal Trappings he suggested the Goodman case was not only the tip of a very large iceberg, but that phone tapping had become an accepted way to get stories.
"The simplicity of hacking into voicemail means it is an absolute gift for a newspaper looking to fill its pages with sensational stories," says Burden. "Phone numbers of celebrities are not secret. The contacts books of reporters at the News of the World and other papers are brimming with them and the ones they don't have are not difficult to get. Wherever there is a database there is usually someone willing to leak the information for a price.
"There is definitely a case for increased awareness. If any individual doesn't want to risk their private conversations being listened to they must change their pin regularly. Also if you buy a phone with cash
and it's not registered to a particular name then no one can trace it. Problem solved."
Just hours before the revelations were made public, News of the World announced Stuart Kuttner, managing director and the man who had signed off Mulcaire's 100,000-a- year contract with the newspaper was stepping down from his role after 22 years. The future of former editor Andy Coulson, who David Cameron appointed as the Conservative Party's communications chief just months after he resigned following the jailing of Goodman, last night looked increasingly uncertain. Coulson has always denied knowledge of a wider hacking operation, but difficult questions are now being asked.
"Given the amount of people whose phones were apparently being hacked into I, and I am sure many others, find it very difficult to believe that it wasn't common knowledge," says Burden. "Private detectives don't come cheap, and if reporters were paying them someone must have also been signing off their chits and looking at their expenses. Surely if they hadn't known what was going on they might have asked some questions if they saw hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, being paid out each month.
"MPs have had a rough ride over their expenses claims in recent months, but perhaps the tables have now been turned."
While it is illegal to intercept phone calls and access voicemail messages, the law does contain a defence of public interest. However, with the list of phones reportedly hacked in to including Lenny Henry, Patsy Kensit and Anne Robinson, the messages were unlikely to reveal any state secrets.
"Some papers like to complain privacy laws make it impossible to report stories of public interest, but that's simply not true," says
Burden. "No one would have a problem if journalists hacked into the voicemail of Soviet spies and discovered some major threat to security. It's hardly the same as listening into the messages of a Hollywood actress is it?"
According to the Guardian, the News of the World has already paid 1m in out of court settlements, including 700,000 to PFA boss Taylor. While assistant comissioner of the Metropolitan Police John Yates has announced the investigation will not be reopened, the fall-out could spread much further than the News Group headquarters.
"I don't think the News of the World are alone," says Burden. "Hacking into phones has become accepted practice in some quarters.
"A report by the Information Commissioner's Office a few years ago suggested hundreds of journalists had at one time or another engaged in the practice.
"Following the Goodman case I suspect papers did become more wary about employing private investigators for this purpose or at least more careful to cover their tracks. I doubt, however, whether it was a sufficiently cautionary tale to bring an end to the practice altogether."
The real problem is that developments in technology have made it easier than ever to trace, track and listen in on other people's phone calls. While Mulcaire may have been paid thousands to access the voicemails of well-known faces, even for those unlikely ever to make headlines the surveillance culture is growing.
"We have been selling software which allows people to see what texts and phonecalls someone else is making for nearly 10 years now," says Nigel Allen of the Spy Shop in Kirkstall Road, Leeds. "It costs 300 and takes just a few minutes to set up. Most of our customers are people who fear their partner is having an affair, but we also sell to companies who suspect one of their staff is leaking sensitive information.
"It's very easy to install, but you do need to have physical access to the phone in question. Once it is installed whenever they send or receive a message a copy is also sent to your phone and if they make a call you can either listen in direct or have it recorded on to a voicemail to listen later.
"It's only people who are doing something they shouldn't that have anything to worry about."
For newspapers in the future that may not be an adequate defence.
How the phone hackers did it
Hacking into live mobile phone conversations is tricky. Before the advent of the digital age it was possible to tune into calls using a scanner. Now technology means the calls are scrambled and difficult and costly to decode. Hacking into voicemail messages is altogether easier.
Hackers first need the celebrity's mobile number and the phone network to which they belong. Those not readily available can usually be obtained for a small payment from an illicit source.
Voicemails of mobiles can be accessed from any phone. The only problem is if the security pin code has been reset. If this turns out to be the case, hackers, posing as a credit controllers or someone similarly official sounding, call the network operator and ask them to reset the security pin code to the default mode. More often than not this can be done without too many awkward questions and it means within a matter of seconds the pin code reverts to 4444.
The scam is often detected when those whose phones have been hacked discover messages that would normally flash up as new appear as already having been listened to.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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