1. Hacking--at privacy and/or press freedom
Phone Hacking Scandal
In July 2011 the Guardian newspaper broke a story that the News of the World tabloid had
hacked the cell phone of a murdered schoolgirl in 2002 making their parents and the police
believe that the schoolgirl was still alive when she wasn’t by sending messages off her
phone and reading messages which had been sent to her phone off her parents and etc…
At the time the police didn’t know anyone had hacked into her phone and thought she was
still alive so instead of looking for her killer or body they was looking for the missing girl,
because of the outrage the media baron Rupert Murdoch shut down the News of the
World. A variety of his News Corp. executives has resigned or had been forced out of their
positions, as had two top law officers at Scotland Yard who allegedly failed to order
appropriate follow-up investigations of the phone hacking evidence in the Yard’s
possession for at least 5 years. The News Corp agreed to pay 3 million pounds to the
family of the Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl whose cell phone was hacked by the
News of the world. The evidence which they got suggests that its journalists and
investigators may have hacked in and listened to the voicemail of nearly 6,000 people and
that’s how they got majority of their stories for their news. In November 2011 there were
indications that hacking may also have been used at The Sun, the weekday paper of the
Sunday News of the World.
Even though at the time the News of the World might not have meant to cause any harm
to anyone and they didn’t think they’d get caught doing this, since they have done it to a
variety of people to get a stories, they still broke a variety of laws for example the Human
rights act 1998, the right of privacy. They know they shouldn’t be hacking peoples phones
to get stories especially not missing/dead schoolgirls phones. Not only did they break the
Human Rights Act 1998 also the Privacy Law, this refers to the laws which deal with
personal information about individuals which can be collected by the governments and
other public as well as private organisations. Also how it is stored and used. Even though
the schoolgirls phone wasn’t exactly that they had still hacked a variety of other peoples
phones which can hold a variety of different information including personal information
for example if they hacked someone’s phone who is famous and their phone numbers etc..
are in their phone they could save them and find out a variety of other personal
information about them which they don’t need to know. I don’t think it’s right that they
hacked anyone’s phone for them reasons.