News Corp's final hacking bill
The media giant is about to put this dark chapter to bed.
Between 1980 and 2011 the owners of Britain's largest tabloid newspapers and magazines ran the world's largest spying and intelligence operation, perhaps beaten only by the CIA, MI6, the KGB and Mossad. Hundreds of police officers, petty bureaucrats, bank staff and telephone company workers were recruited and paid to provide private and confidential information on tens of thousands of celebrities, politicians and sporting identities.
This was spying on an industrial scale. Dozens of so-called private detective agencies worked for the major media groups, and hundreds of journalists used paid "informants" to dig up the dirt. Phone bills and bank account statements were purchased for as little as £300. Email and mobile phone accounts were hacked and spoofed. Journalists knew when every minor royal or celebrity bought a new car and the registration number, making tracking big names easier. Want to listen in on a couple of minor royals talking about their extra-marital affairs? No problem! While the big media companies spent tens of millions of pounds on illegal spying and paying bribes, the payoff was massive. A steady flow of steamy and compromising news articles powered the British public's thirst for salacious gossip.
That vast criminal enterprise collapsed in on itself in 2011 when it was revealed that a private investigator employed by News Corporation's News Of The World had hacked the phone account of teenage murder victim Milly Dowler. The public outrage led to the Leveson Inquiry, chaired by Lord Leveson, into the "culture, practices and ethics" of the press.
The inquiry opened the lid on the sewer that was the British media industry. It also opened a floodgate of private lawsuits against all the major publishers for invasion of privacy and worse. Fifteen years down the track, after tens of thousands of confidential settlements with hacking victims, the flood of claims and the final bill can be added up.
