Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media

Douglas Caddy · September 13, 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2011/sep/13/phone-hacking-james-murdoch-video

Douglas Caddy · September 14, 2011

Exposed after eight years: a private eye's dirty work for Fleet Street

Files seen by The Independent detail 17,000 requests to investigator Steve Whittamore

The Independent

By Ian Burrell and Mark Olden

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exposed-after-eight-years-a-private-eyes-dirty-work-for-fleet-street-2354360.html

Former police officer has revealed how the authorities have known for more than eight years the vast scale on which media organisations employed private detectives to obtain the personal information of thousands of individuals, including the families and friends of murder victims.

The Independent has conducted a detailed examination of the files seized as part of Operation Motorman in 2003, and has been told by the lead investigator on that inquiry that his team was forbidden from interviewing journalists who were paying for criminal records checks, vehicle registration searches, and other illegal practices.

Among the targets of these searches were the victims of some of the most notorious crimes and tragedies of the past 15 years. Many of the investigations were perfectly legal, but many others, it is clear, were well outside the law.

The Motorman files reveal that the Sunday Express used private investigators to obtain the private telephone number of the parents of Holly Wells, shortly after she was murdered in Soham by Ian Huntley. In a statement last night, Express Newspapers said it "has never instructed private investigators to obtain information illegally. We have always and will continue to uphold the highest level of journalistic standards".

The parents of the murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne were targeted by the same investigator, who was hired by two national newspaper groups News International and Trinity Mirror and separately by a celebrity magazine, Best, which is owned by the National Magazine Company. The same agency was also used by the News of the World to target the parents of Milly Dowler, and by The People and NOTW to obtain private numbers for the family of Stuart Lubbock, whose body was found in Michael Barrymore's swimming pool. The People used similar tactics to target the families of children who were victims of the Dunblane massacre.

Operation Motorman was set up by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to look into widespread breaches of data protection laws by the media. In a signed witness statement given to The Independent, Motorman's original lead investigator, a retired police inspector with 30 years' experience, accuses the authorities of serious failings, and of being too "frightened" to question journalists.

"I feel the investigation should have been conducted a lot more vigorously, a lot more thoroughly and it may have revealed a lot more information," he said. "I was disappointed and somewhat disillusioned with the senior management because I felt as though they were burying their heads in the sand. It was like being on an ostrich farm."

He claimed that had investigators been allowed to interview journalists at the time, the phone-hacking scandal and other serious breaches of privacy by the media may have been uncovered years earlier. "The biggest question that needed answering was, why did the reporters want all these numbers and what were they doing with them?" His comments reflect badly on the ICO, and the Press Complaints Commission, which was given early notification of the evidence in the Motorman files. "We weren't allowed to talk to journalists," he said. "It was fear they were frightened."

The PCC said last night that it had never been given sight of the Motorman evidence but had strengthened its code and issued industry guidelines which had led to an improvement in standards. All the information has been in the hands of the authorities since 2003, when a team from the ICO seized the material from the home of private detective Stephen Whittamore. Whittamore and three other members of his private investigation network were given conditional discharges when Motorman came to court in 2005. No journalists were charged, although the files contain prima facie evidence of thousands of criminal offences. Thousands of victims disclosed in the paperwork have never even been told they were targeted.

News International spent £193 and then a further £105, hiring Whittamore's company JJ Services to carry out investigations into "Sarah Payne", a few months after her murder in 2000. The People also paid for the ex-directory number of Sarah's family home in Surrey. Whittamore was engaged by Best magazine to obtain the same number. At the same time Best, which is now owned by Hearst Magazines UK, asked for three more ex-directory searches relating to Pam Warren, a survivor of the Paddington rail crash of 1999, who was so disfigured she had to wear a face mask. Hearst declined to comment. The families of Dunblane massacre victims Aimie Adam and Matthew Birnie also appear as subjects in the Motorman files, following requests for ex-directory numbers by The People.

When a major tragedy occurred, Whittamore was often the first person that tabloid newsrooms would call. NOTW spent more than £200 using him to locate the parents and other relatives of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose mobile phone was later hacked by Glenn Mulcaire.

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said: "There was an absolute lack of any wish on the part of the police or the ICO or those looking into it to start delving into the prosecution of newspapers and journalists. [The ICO] took a list of hundreds and hundreds of journalists' names. Yes, there's a public interest defence but they didn't even bother to go and ask whether that was what they employed Whittamore for."

The Operation Motorman investigator, who has requested anonymity, has written to Lord Leveson asking to give evidence to his inquiry into media standards. The inquiry has expressed interest in him giving oral evidence or submitting a witness statement. He has also been interviewed by Strathclyde Police, which is investigating criminal activity by journalists in Scotland. The Whittamore files have also recently been requested by the Metropolitan Police's Operation Tuleta team, which is investigating the use of computer hacking by journalists.

Many searches will have been carried out legitimately, but the files show the grand scale on which newspapers were using private detectives to gain access to the police national computer and the records of the DVLA in order to obtain details of criminal records and vehicle registrations. Such offences could carry a jail sentence for encouraging a police officer or DVLA employee to commit misconduct in public office. JJ Services was hired to "blag" personal information (by impersonating individuals or officials) from organisations ranging from hospitals to hotels, gyms and banks. Blags are not always illegal for instance, when information is freely volunteered by an individual without reference to a database.

Newspapers and magazines also used the agency to illicitly obtain thousands of private telephone numbers, often including the details held by telephone companies under the category "Friends and Family".

In total, the Whittamore files reference 17,489 orders from media organisations. Some 1,028 are in the so-called "blue book", which was essentially dedicated to News International. The "red book" contained 6,774 jobs, most on behalf of Trinity Mirror titles. The "green book", which includes work from Associated Newspapers titles, Express Newspapers and some celebrity magazines, has 2,227 references. And the "yellow book", which is miscellaneous, has 7,460 orders.

In 2006, the Information Commissioner's Office published a report What Price Privacy?, giving some details of what it had discovered. The ICO did not identify victims and, in a follow-up report, printed a league table of titles that had used Whittamore's service, showing a total of 3,757 transactions.

The senior investigator described the report as "very inaccurate", citing the apparent under-reporting.

Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, said the ICO stood by its reports and that the placing of these documents before Parliament "was a far more effective method of raising awareness of the illegal trade in personal information" than attempting to prosecute journalists. "The ICO has always been clear that our decision not to pursue legal action against any of the journalists linked to the Operation Motorman investigation was based on a lack of evidence that the journalists who had received information from Mr Whittamore had directly asked him to obtain the information illegally. Without this evidence the ICO could not justify chasing every possible prosecution as this would have taken a disproportionate amount of time and resource and was unlikely to lead to any meaningful results."

The ICO said the lower figure in its report was a result of grouping multiple requests by a journalist as a single transaction.

The most alarming inquiries in the Motorman files and those which would appear to be among the least justifiable in the public interest are those which involve intrusions into the privacy of victims of serious crime. In 2003, following a drive-by murder in Birmingham, a reporter on The People employed Whittamore to carry out a series of ex-directory checks and other searches on the relatives and associates of the victims, Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare. He obtained an ex-directory number for the parents of Charlene and sent a total bill to the paper for £355.50.

Other tragedies were subjects of searches. When Stuart Lubbock was found drowned in the swimming pool of Michael Barrymore, NOTW paid Whittamore for the ex-directory number of Claire Wicks, his girlfriend and mother of their daughters. The People made similar inquiries for the private number of the dead man's father, Terry.

Blags were Whittamore's speciality. Charging £100 a time, he repeatedly posed as someone else to obtain information from organisations. Among the targets were the Guide Association, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, the Bel Air Beverly Hills hotel and the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Some of the tasks performed by Whittamore for newspapers are entirely legal and a number of others have been carried out to obtain information in the public interest, such as in exposing corruption and other criminal activity. In some cases, editors may not have been aware their reporters were engaging private detectives.

Some subjects were political figures. Anji Hunter, former adviser to Tony Blair, came under close scrutiny following her break-up with the landscape gardener Nick Cornwall. The Daily Mail asked Whittamore to obtain the address of Hunter and Cornwall. It then asked for the "Family and Friends" numbers listed by the couple, through which Whittamore discovered the address of Cornwall's parents. The reporter then requested the "Family and Friends" numbers of the parents 15 numbers, many of them in Liverpool and did a similar exercise on one of those to produce a further 10 numbers. Whittamore and his network of associates typically obtained such numbers by blagging them from staff at BT. There is no evidence that the Daily Mail engaged in phone hacking, and no article actually appeared. Associated Newspapers, which owns the Daily Mail, said last night that it had banned the use of private investigators in 2006.

Much of the work in the files targets celebrities or appears to be salacious gossip that has no clear public interest justification. The files contain scores of invoices paid to JJ Services, and among those paid by News International are jobs which he records in his files under such descriptions as "Love Rat Mum", "Sex in Unusual Places", "Emma's Sexy Secrets" and "Bonking Tory". News International declined to comment.

A spokesman for Trinity Mirror said: "Since the publication of the Information Commissioner's What Price Privacy Now? report it has been widely known that a number of media organisations, including some of our titles, used the services of Steve Whittamore. We have not used Steve Whittamore since that report. We are engaging fully with the Leveson Inquiry as we will with any other inquiries from appropriate regulatory or legal authorities."

Only a tiny proportion of victims have been told they were targeted. The ICO investigator and his senior colleague interviewed a small sample, including Ian Hislop, Lenny Henry, Hugh Grant, Chris Tarrant and Charlotte Church.

There are around 400 named journalists in the files, from investigative reporters and newsdesk executives to showbiz hacks and diary writers. For some, Whittamore's services were not just a useful tool but almost an addiction. One reporter used him 422 times. Another carried out 191 transactions, requesting dozens of vehicle searches, more than a dozen criminal records checks, several blags and numerous Friends and Family inquiries. Yet the Motorman team were told not to speak to any journalist.

The whistleblower's story: They were too afraid of the press to let us interview journalists

It was incredible. Even as we were doing the search I could see how big it was and that night when we retired to the hotel I spent about four hours browsing through it and the more I browsed the more apparent it became how big it was going to be.

We were down there for two or three days. We came back and the first thing I did was arrange an informal meeting.

When we enlightened them with what we'd found I was subsequently told, within a few days, that we [the investigations unit] weren't allowed to talk to journalists and that he [the Information Commissioner] would deal with the press. It was fear, they were frightened.

We told them what our plan of action was. We intended to put together 30 or 40 prosecution packages and then go for conspiracy, which would involve the blaggers, the private detectives, the corrupt sellers of the information, right up to the journalists.

When I mentioned the press, I still remember the words which one of them said: "We can't take them on, they're too big for us."

I remember thinking, "It's our job to take them on and if we can't take them on, who does take them on?" As an ex-police officer for 30 years and a detective, there's nothing worse than having a damned good case and somebody tells you, "You can't go and interview the suspect".

If you don't ask questions you don't get answers. I feel that had we been given the opportunity to interview some of the reporters we might have got a hint about this hacking because it was totally unknown at that time.

The biggest question that needed answering was why did the reporters want all these numbers and what were they doing with them?

I knew about phone-tapping but I knew there were complicated issues involved in phone tapping so we dismissed that. Had we been given the opportunity to investigate more thoroughly and interview journalists it may well have identified that phone-hacking existed instead of waiting for the Mulcaire case to break. If we had identified this in 2003 then perhaps a lot of this would never have happened.

I was not present at the Whittamore court case but I was told that the first thing the judge said was a comment about not seeing any journalists in the dock.

If newspapers and reporters had seen the ICO going into their premises or arranging to interview journalists I think it would have sent a lot stronger message out than publishing a report 13 months later.

I feel the investigation should have been conducted a lot more vigorously, a lot more thoroughly, and it may have revealed a lot more information. I know it's difficult to tell all the victims but isn't that the Information Commissioner's job?

There are thousands of people out there who still don't know they've been victims. When I was in the police I was always taught that your victim is your most important person.

I was disappointed and somewhat disillusioned with the senior management because I felt as though they were burying their heads in the sand. It was like being on an ostrich farm.

The impression being given is that they never prosecuted the press because they were so disappointed with the [Whittamore] result of a conditional discharge.

But by then it was too late and, in any case, we knew virtually from the start of that inquiry that no journalist was ever going to get prosecuted.

To be honest it made a bit of a farce of the investigation.

Were these methods illegal?

The transactions which are contained in Stephen Whittamore's files range from area and occupancy searches to criminal records checks and inquiries into vehicle registrations.

Area and occupancy searches

Area and address occupancy searches may have been procured illicitly but would provide no prospect of a prosecution, even when there was no public interest defence in requesting the information. This is because the requester of the information could claim an expectation that the investigator would acquire the details through legitimate means, such as by consulting an electoral roll in a public library, for instance.

Ex-directory checks, phone 'conversions' and friends and family searches

This would be information obtained from a phone company and might be in breach of Section 55 of the Data Protection Act (which came into effect in March 2000 and carries a maximum fine of £500,000) unless Whittamore had obtained them from a friend or relative. These searches could be legally defended if the inquiry was in the public interest.

Searches of the police national computer or the DVLA database

Serious. Not only would they be a breach of the Data Protection Act but in serious cases, where there was no public interest in the inquiry, the requester of the information might be charged with aiding and abetting misconduct in public office by the person supplying the information, which could carry a jail sentence.

Edited September 14, 2011 by Douglas Caddy

Douglas Caddy · September 14, 2011

Leveson inquiry: the full list of core participants

Inquiry chair Lord Leveson has published list of individuals and organisations who will have core participant status

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 14 September 2011 13.20 BST

Inquiry chair Lord Leveson on Wednesday published a list of individuals and organisations who will have core participant status. More can be added during the course of the inquiry.

Core participants are decided on the basis of whether they:

1. Played, or may have played, a direct and significant role in relation to the matters to which the inquiry relates.

2. Have a significant interest in an important aspect of the matters to which the inquiry relates.

3. May be subject to explicit or significant criticism during the inquiry proceedings or in the report, or in any interim report.

Individuals who believe they may have been victims of media intrusion

Chris Bryant MP

Tessa Jowell MP

Denis MacShane MP

The Rt Hon Lord Prescott of Kingston upon Hull

Joan Smith

Christopher Shipman

Tom Rowland

Mark Lewis

Mark Thomson

Gerry McCann

Kate McCann

Christopher Jefferies

Max Moseley

Brian Paddick

Paul Gascoigne

David Mills

Sienna Miller

Hugh Grant

Ben Jackson

Ciara Parkes

Simon Hughes MP

Max Clifford

Sky Andrew

Ulrika Jonsson

Mark Oaten

Michele Milburn

Abi Titmuss

Calum Best

Claire Ward

Mary-Ellen Field

Garry Flitcroft

Ian Hurst

Shobna Gulati

Mike Hollingsworth

Kieron Fallon

Ashvini Sharma

Tim Blackstone

Valentina Semenenko

Sally Dowler

Bob Dowler

Gemma Dowler

Sheryl Gascoigne

Graham Shear

JK Rowling

James Watson

Margaret Watson

Organisations

Metropolitan police

News International

Northern & Shell

Guardian News & Media

Associated Newspapers

Douglas Caddy · September 14, 2011

Leveson phone-hacking inquiry: JK Rowling among 'core participants'

Judge names figures who will be able to give evidence to investigation into phone hacking and media ethics and practices

By Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 14 September 2011 13.13 BST

Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who famously guards her privacy, is one of a number of prominent public figures expected to give evidence to Lord Justice Leveson's judicial inquiry into phone hacking and media ethics and practices.

Rowling is one of 46 celebrities, politicians, sportsmen, other public figures, and members of the public who believe they have been the victims of media intrusion granted "core participant" status in the inquiry by Leveson on Wednesday.

This will mean Rowling and other core participants can give evidence personally, or via a lawyer, on her experience of alleged media intrusion to the inquiry, which begins in October at London's Royal Courts of Justice.

The Harry Potter author has previously expressed her displeasure with the press. In May 2008, she won a legal battle to secure the privacy of her children after photographs were published in the Sunday Express of her young son as he was wheeled down an Edinburgh street in a push-chair.

Others on the list including Anne Diamond's former husband, Mike Hollingsworth; former nurse turned model and TV presenter Abi Titmus; Sheryl Gascoigne; and Mark Oaten, the former MP who had to pull out of the Liberal Democrat leadership race after tabloid revelations about his sex life.

The parents of murder victim Diane Watson also in Leveson's initial core participants list, along with the parents and sister of teenage murder victim Milly Dowler, and the parents of Madeleine McCann. The son of mass murderer Harold Shipman is also on the list.

Christopher Jefferies, arrested on suspicion of murdering Joanna Yeates in December but released without charge, has also been granted core participant status. He subsequently sued several newspapers successfully for libel.

Several celebrities who have allegedly had their phones hacked, including Hugh Grant, Sienna Miller and Calum Best, are among the 46 named on Leveson's list of core participants.

MPs Chris Bryant, Tessa Jowell, Denis MacShane, Simon Hughes, and former Labour deputy leader Lord Prescott also feature, along with a smattering of sports stars including jockey Kieron Fallon and former Premiership footballer Gary Flitcroft.

Rebekah Brooks, former News International chief executive and editor of the News of the World and the Sun, has been denied her application to become a core participant as she no longer works for the Murdoch company, but she will be able to give evidence as a witness. She has appointed a lawyer to act on her behalf who will under the rules of the inquiry will be allowed to apply to ask questions.

Jonathan Rees, a private investigator who was at one stage employed by the News of the World, also applied to be a core participant, arguing that there "might be significant criticism of him".

However, Rees was also denied the status of core participant on the grounds that he was not of significant enough interest to the first module of the inquiry. This will focus on the relationship between the press and the public and extends not merely to the allegations of phone hacking but also to other potentially illegal or unethical behaviour.

News International, owner of the paper at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal, the now defunct News of the World, the Sunday Times, the Times and the Sun, has been given core participant status as expected, as has Guardian News & Media, the owner of the Guardian, which has published a series of revelations on phone hacking over the past two years.

Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers and Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell, owner of the Daily Express, the Sunday Express and the Daily Star, will also be core participants.

English PEN, a writers' freedom association, and Index on Censorship were also denied core participant status.

Barrister David Sherborne, who is representing a group of victims suing the News of the World alleged phone hacking, including Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan, had applied to represent 14 people who either believe their voicemail was intercepted or claimed to have their privacy invaded by the press.

However, Leveson said he was not prepared to give core participant status to those who could not be named.

Leveson has also decided the Metropolitan police can be a core participant

Douglas Caddy · September 14, 2011

Ian Burrell: Everyone used him. Even me – but I can justify it

The subject of the work by Whittamore has more than 60 convictions andwas later prosecuted for defrauding a charity

The Independent

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Steve Whittamore was known all over Fleet Street. I once used him myself, although I had no recollection of this until I saw the entry, tucked away among the 17,000 other transactions with journalists.

It was from January 1999, a search to confirm the identity and address of a veteran conman and serial fraudster who had taken control of a charity that was being trusted by the Home Office to run entire wings of British prisons. The occupancy search was not illegal, but a phone conversion – without a public interest justification – would have been a breach of the Data Protection Act, although the Act was not in force at that time.

The subject of the inquiry, one Kenner Jones, has more than 60 convictions and was later prosecuted for defrauding the charity. More recently, he moved to Kenya, where he was accused by the BBC of posing as a priest and working as a doctor without medical qualifications.

This was Whittamore's only business with The Independent but he was kept busy by most of the rest of the national press. There are about 400 journalists named in the Operation Motorman files, including some of the most experienced reporters in Fleet Street and others working in magazines and television. They range from investigations specialists and newsdesk executives to showbiz hacks and diary writers.

His colour-coded books – in red, blue, green and yellow – carefully recorded the subject of his inquiry, the name of the journalist requesting the information, the nature of the work and the subsequent result. In order to make the records more searchable, the original Motorman team had the information from the books transferred to computer dics at a cost of several thousand pounds. Further colour-coding was used to distinguish between the type of job – a criminal records check would appear in bright green, vehicle checks in grey, a Friends and Family telephone search in pink and a blag in white.

Some searches were in the public interest but a large proportion of Whittamore's inquiries concerned the personal lives of celebrities. Some inquiries were ordered so that the journalist could simply speak to people who were the subject of an article. Others were apparently searches for salacious gossip.

At the end of the 1990s, when Whittamore was building his network of investigators and newspaper clients, the evolution of computer technology was at a stage that now seems positively prehistoric.

This was the world before Google, the search tool that has made it possible to contact almost anyone with a minimum of time and effort. It was an era when mobile telephones were less ubiquitous and when numbers were guarded much more fiercely than they are now. It was a time before the Data Protection Act, which came into force in March 2000. In that environment, a service that offered to locate individuals at short notice was invaluable to journalists, and Whittamore's business boomed.

Douglas Caddy · September 14, 2011

Lawsuit: News Corp. directors knew about U.S. hacking a decade ago

www.rawstory.com

By Stephen C. Webster

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011 -- 11:47 am

The board of directors for News Corporation knew that two of its U.S. subsidiaries were involved in illegal hacking efforts against competitors but did nothing to stop it, according to a lawsuit filed this week by shareholders.

The allegations point to News America Marketing and NDS Group, two News Corp. companies, as carrying out hacking operations against competitors. News Corp. attorneys admitted in court documents from 2009 that computers at News America Marketing were used to hack into the secure website of U.S.-based Floorgraphics, Inc. some 11 times.

Floorgraphics claimed in a lawsuit that News America Marketing stole business from the company by hacking into their website from October 2003 to January 2004. The company agreed to dismiss the case after receiving a $29.5 million payment from News America Marketing.

A lawyer for News America Marketing admitted during the trial that someone hacked into Floorgraphics website “through a firewall at News America Marketing headquarters,” but that the company did not know who did it.

"For more than a decade, News Corp subsidiaries have engaged in highly improper practices that have subjected News Corp to great financial and reputational damage," the shareholder complaint alleges, adding that the board of directors had "not lifted a finger" to conduct oversight of these activities.

They further suggested that the board's inaction on these matters permitted "a historic pattern of corruption" within the company, calling the behavior "pervasive."

The suit also points to hacking during 2001 by NDS Group, News Corp.'s digital television smart card subsidiary, which was accused by French media giant Vivendi of hacking into subsidiary EchoStar's smart cards and extracting their proprietary software. That software later wound up on the Internet, then on bootlegged smart cards being sold on the streets, giving media pirates free access to pay television channels.

Vivendi claimed NDS's actions had cost them up to $1 billion in damages.

Shareholders said the allegation was settled in 2002, after News Corp. purchased Vivendi's Italian television platform Telepiu for €920 million -- but only after a jury described NDS's actions as "illegal."

The U.S. Department of Justice said it was investigating whether News Corp. employees targeted the families of 9/11 victims in its phone hacking schemes, which have embroiled the company in scandal since July.

So far, 16 employees of News International, the company's British media arm, have been arrested in relation to an investigation by U.K. authorities.

The shareholder lawsuit, filed in a Delaware court, is a revision of a similar suit (PDF) shareholders filed in June. News Corp. officials have not commented on the pending litigation

Douglas Caddy · September 14, 2011

Politicians could be barred from ruling on media mergers, says Jeremy Hunt

Culture secretary says move would stop people questioning ministers' motives in takeovers such as News Corp's BSkyB bid

By James Robinson

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 14 September 2011 19.00 BST

Politicians could be barred from making decisions on media mergers under measures to be included in a new communications bill, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has said.

The proposal would end the arrangement under which the business secretary can block the acquisition of media companies on public interest grounds.

Hunt told the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge that the proposed takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation, which was abandoned at the height of the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed Rupert Murdoch's media company in July, raised questions over the role politicians played in approving such deals.

"I was very conscious in the recent BSkyB bid that however fairly I ran the process, people were always going to question my motives," he said.

Hunt was handed the power to rule on the BSkyB bid after the business secretary, Vince Cable, told undercover Daily Telegraph reporters he had "declared war" on Murdoch.

"I tried to deal with this by seeking and publishing independent advice at every stage of the process," Hunt said. "But in competition law, we deal with this more robustly by removing politicians from the process altogether. This ensures justice is seen to be done as well as actually being done. We should ask whether the same should apply for the protection of media plurality."

The shadow culture secretary, Ivan Lewis, earlier this year called for ministers to have their powers to block media bids removed.

Hunt also confirmed that regulators, including Ofcom and the Competition Commission, could be allowed to launch investigations into media plurality without the trigger of a takeover bid: "I believe media plurality should mirror competition policy more closely, with independent regulators given the right to start investigations into media plurality and propose remedies to protect plurality even in the absence of corporate transactions." .

He said newspapers would not fall under the jurisdiction of broadcasting regulator Ofcom even as they produce more video content on their websites, a move that will be welcomed by the press.

Hunt challenged the industry to put forward proposals about replacing the Press Complaints Commission, saying its successor was likely to cover newspaper and magazine content across all platforms, including audio and video on the internet.

"It cannot be sensible to regulate newsprint through the PCC, on-demand websites through Atvod and IPTV through Ofcom," he said.

As expected, Hunt laid out plans for a crackdown on piracy, detailing a range of proposals designed to make it more difficult for illegal websites to carry pirated films and movies.

They include forcing advertisers to remove their content from websites carrying illegal material and making banks and credit card companies responsible for removing their payment services.

He said internet service providers should force their customers to opt in or out of parental control safeguards when they sign contracts in order to better protect children from offensive content.

The measures outlined by Hunt are likely to be included in a green paper to be published by the end of the year. A draft communications bill is expected by April 2013, with a new act expected to be passed by 2015.

Douglas Caddy · September 14, 2011

£375 for Jeremy Clarkson, £655 for JK Rowling: the private eye's lucrative trade

Vast range of activities revealed in second part of Independent investigation

The Independent

By Ian Burrell, Media Editor and Mark Olden

Thursday, 15 September 2011

The tabloid press hired private detectives to investigate Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, when she was still a student in Scotland, and Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the former US President, when she was studying at Oxford. The same detective agency was hired to investigate Philippa Middleton, the Duchess's younger sister, when she was a teenager, and to carry out a "blag" for information on the hen and stag parties of Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex.

The Independent has examined files seized as part of Operation Motorman in 2003 and been told by the lead investigator on that inquiry that his team were forbidden from interviewing journalists from a wide range of media organisations who hired a private detective agency to track down personal information. More than 17,000 searches were carried out, many of them in breach of data protection laws.

In a signed witness statement given to this newspaper, the former police detective inspector who led Operation Motorman, accused the authorities of serious failings. "We weren't allowed to talk to journalists," said the investigator, who was working for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). "It was fear – they were frightened."

The files show that JK Rowling, who was named yesterday as one of the core participants in the Leveson Inquiry into media standards, was targeted by the private investigator Steve Whittamore in the summer of 2000, at the time that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the record-breaking fourth book in the Harry Potter series, was published. The private detective charged £655 for his unspecified inquiries.

Whittamore was asked to obtain confidential information on the Duchess of Cambridge in April 2002, when she was known simply as Kate Middleton, a 20-year-old student at St Andrews University who had been linked with her fellow student Prince William. The "yellow book" file, one of four colour-coded A4 books kept by Whittamore detailing his business dealings with journalists, reveals that the private eye was given her mobile phone number and asked to locate her family home. He was then required to provide the "Family & Friends" numbers for the Middleton home address in Berkshire and returned with 10 numbers. He charged £500 per number to obtain, using those details, the names and addresses of the family's close circle. The book then records separate inquiries for "Catherine Middleton" and her 18-year-old sister Philippa, known as Pippa. Both jobs are listed as separate Family & Friends searches, presumably made on their mobile numbers. Some of the work was recorded in the files as being carried out by one of Whittamore's associates, a former Hells Angel based on the South Coast.

At the time, Kate Middleton had just come on to the media's radar after appearing at a university charity fashion show in a sheer dress that revealed her underwear. Prince William, who attended the fashion show, had previously played tennis with his fellow student and speculation focused on his future living arrangements. In total, the operation to target the Middleton sisters would have involved more than 50 breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998, Section 55, which covers the unlawful disclosure, procurement and selling of personal information contained within a database. Each time a number is passed on or converted, another breach of the law is committed. To justify its actions, a newspaper would have to demonstrate that its inquiries were in the public interest.

Whittamore was also hired to conduct something he listed as the "Hen & Stag Blag" ahead of the marriage of Prince Edward to Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999. The luxury Lanesborough Hotel near Hyde Park, which hosted both the hen and the stag party, was targeted by the private investigator to obtain details of the events. A report later emerged comparing the two parties and giving details of guests, cocktails and canapés.

Chelsea Clinton was subject to a Whittamore investigation while studying for a Master's degree in international relations at University College, Oxford. In October 2002, the investigator was hired to locate Ms Clinton and her boyfriend Ian Klaus, a Rhodes scholar at Jesus College. Searches focused on Jericho, a historic neighbourhood of the city. The private investigator was then hired to conduct something he recorded in his files as the "Peak Fitness Blag", which is understood to have been an attempt to procure information from the Oxford gym where the couple were members.

Jonathan Ross was investigated in 1999 when Whittamore's company, JJ Services, demanded a fee of £480 for inquiries which were simply headed "wife". At that time, the tabloids were reporting that the couple had briefly split up and that the television presenter's wife had been suffering from depression. Jeremy Clarkson, now a tabloid and broadsheet columnist himself, was targeted in 1997 for £375-worth of private information as he became a rising star on the BBC's Top Gear and details were emerging of his wild times as a public schoolboy.

Papers asked the detective agency to access the Police National Computer in order to satisfy their suspicions about the pasts of popular entertainment stars. The singer Ms Dynamite, at the height of her fame after winning the Mercury Prize in 2002, was promptly made the subject of a criminal record check, as was her manager, Desmond George. Also checked for a possible criminal record was Sada Walkington, a housemate in the Channel 4 reality show Big Brother who was characterised as a hippie with a taste for yoga and eating tofu.

Peter Salmon, the head of BBC North and currently being tipped as a possible future director-general of the BBC, was the subject of a Whittamore operation dubbed the "Belair Beverly Hills Blag", after the former Granada television executive's marriage break-up and subsequent relationship with Coronation Street actress Sarah Lancashire (who was herself the subject of a £130 Whittamore invoice). Other Whittamore blags on various targets included the "Montego Bay Blag", the "Hillgrove Cat Farm Blag", the "Equity Blag", the "Amanda Barrie Blag" and the "Dawn's Massage Parlour Blag". The heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub was subject to an operation described by Whittamore as "2 blags and find about". The jockey Kieren Fallon, whose private life was under investigation by the tabloids in 1999, was the subject of the "GPO Blag Fallon" and a series of ex-directory searches.

The former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone was the subject of an invoice from JJ Services, first under the heading "love child", when rumours of his earlier children surfaced in 1999, and then in 2002 under the heading "Com Cab blag". At the time, in 2002, the mayor was being criticised for his use of taxis and the Greater London Authority had an account with a firm called Computer Cab. The BBC Match of the Day presenter Mark Lawrenson was the subject of at least three vehicle checks and a bizarre attempt to discover if the former Liverpool defender had any business dealings with the television presenter Lionel Blair. Whittamore was asked to conduct ex-directory searches for various papers on such well-known figures as Jeremy Paxman, John Cleese, Elizabeth Hurley and Linford Christie. The award-winning charity worker Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company, was similarly targeted.

One paper spent around £2,000 investigating the actress Tamzin Outhwaite, obtaining her ex-directory number and the names and addresses of the six numbers listed as her Friends & Family. Whittamore's company received £250 for its inquiries into Sir Paul McCartney, £300 for an investigation into the "ex" of actress Anna Friel, £250 for a probe into a "hotel" associated with Mick Jagger, £120 for a job linked to the "daughter" of John Major and £250 on the "exes" of David Beckham. Some "research" on the comedian Frank Skinner generated a further £67.50.

Wayne Rooney was a money-spinner even before Whittamore was raided in 2003. Whittamore was asked to trawl addresses in the young footballer's Liverpool neighbourhood of Croxteth for numbers of relatives and friends.

The vast amount of Whittamore's work came from the tabloids but broadsheets also used his services. One title hired him to make inquiries into bank payments as part of an investigation into renovations at the home of a government minister. The private investigator came back with details of a private company's bank balance and overdraft facility. Television companies were also among Whittamore's clients. He lists business transactions with two television programmes and with a Wales-based production company.

The Information Commissioner Christopher Graham defended the ICO's Motorman investigation. "The ICO has always been clear that our decision not to pursue legal action against any of the journalists linked to the Operation Motorman investigation was based on a lack of evidence that the journalists who had received information from Mr Whittamore had directly asked him to obtain the information illegally," he said. "Without this evidence the ICO could not justify chasing every possible prosecution as this would have taken a disproportionate amount of time and resource and was unlikely to lead to any meaningful results."

The Whittamore investigation

Steve Whittamore was grilling sausages at his family bungalow near the New Forest when the knock on the door came in 2003. The stocky private detective in his mid-Fifties was spending a rare moment outside of the small office he had set up between his home and garage, a room crowded with paper work.

On the top of a cabinet were a series of hardback A4 note books, colour-coded blue, red, green and yellow. They contained details of his work for journalists working in national newspapers, magazines and television.

When investigators arrived from the Information Commissioner's Office, in the company of a couple of local police officers whose services were not required, Whittamore was amiable but quite adamant from the outset he would not talk about the journalists who were his clients.

But the files that were seized from his home offered unprecedented insight into the media's secret dealings with private detectives, revealing for the first time a vast, lucrative trade in illicit personal data.

The ICO investigation had begun into two DVLA employees who were selling the private details of registered car owners to private detectives and others, hence the name: Operation Motorman. The evidence led back to Whittamore. The private eye was shown a warrant and an ICO search team accompanied by an independent forensic computer analyst entered his home in New Milton, Hampshire.

The investigators later began to uncover how Whittamore's operation ran, unravelling his network of associates. Whittamore himself was a seasoned 'blagger': adept at conning information out of the unwitting. But if he wasn't able to get something himself, he had sources who could.

One of the most prolific was an ex-soldier and Hells Angel in Sussex who specialised in posing as a phone engineer to prise confidential records out of phone companies.

For criminal records, Whittamore would contact a third party who in turn would contact Paul Marshall, a civilian police worker in south London who trawled police databases for payment. If there was a 'blag' he couldn't do himself, he might turn to another private investigator, John Boyall. Whatever it was - vehicle registration numbers, bank statements, tax records – somewhere along the chain someone could get them.

The ICO investigators started pulling together 30 bundles of evidence – linking Whittamore's invoices to named journalists and their victims, whose privacy had been breached.

They wanted to bring a conspiracy charge against both the journalists and the private detectives. Three reporters were spoken to by the police investigating the illegal accessing of criminal record databases but the ICO officers never spoke to a single journalist.

In April 2005 Marshall, Whittamore, Boyall and a retired policeman called Alan King were given conditional discharges. Whittamore and others still faced charges from the Information Commissioner, but within two months they had been dropped.

Douglas Caddy · September 15, 2011

Phone hacking: Durham police called in to review evidence

New commissioner of Metropolitan police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, calls in force to examine evidence from Operation Weeting

By Sandra Laville

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 15 September 2011 14.51 BST

Durham police have been called in by the new commissioner of the Metropolitan force to review the ongoing phone-hacking inquiry, Scotland Yard confirmed on Thursday.

Bernard Hogan-Howe made the decision to ask for another force to examine the evidence gathered in Operation Weeting when he was appointed acting deputy commissioner of the Met in the summer following the departure of assistant commissioner John Yates and commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson. His role on this appointment was to take charge of the Operation Weeting inquiry and it was revealed on Thursday that he had decided as a result of the sensitive nature of the investigation that a review should be carried out.

The Guardian understands the review was not commissioned as a result of the arrest of a 51-year-old officer on the inquiry on suspicion of leaking details. The officer remains on police bail on suspicion of misconduct in a public office.

Talking to the Evening Standard on Thursday Hogan-Howe said: "I have asked another force to have a look at the inquiry to reassure us we are going in the right direction and I think we are."

Scotland Yard added: "We can confirm that the Metropolitan police service has asked an outside police force to conduct a review of Operation Weeting. A review of this kind is considered best practice in a sensitive inquiry of this nature and was instigated by Bernard Hogan-Howe as acting deputy commissioner during the summer. The review team is led by Durham chief constable Jon Stoddart who will report to the Metropolitan police service in due course."

A spokesman for Durham police said: "The Metropolitan Police Service has requested that an independent review of Operation Weeting be undertaken and we can confirm that Jon Stoddart, chief constable of Durham constabulary, has agreed to undertake the review. The review team will be taken from a number of forces outside the MPS."

Operation Weeting was begun in January and is investigating claims into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. The senior detective leading the phone-hacking inquiry, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, told the home affairs select committee in July that there were 4,000 possible victims of phone hacking listed in the pages of private eye Glenn Muclaire's notebooks. She said these individuals were being contacted "as quickly as possible".

Akers's investigation team consists of 45 officers, many of whom have been seconded from homicide teams. Akers is also overseeing a separate investigation into alleged bribes of police officers. This is being shared with the Met's directorate of professional standards and overseen by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Douglas Caddy · September 15, 2011