News of the World phone hacking scandal is an ongoing case, which created massive concern on those laws, which led to set up inquiry on media regulation. This paper will be discussing the issues and analyzing how the News of the World came to its demise for illegal activities like hacking the personal phones of many people to seek out inside information and the legal issues involved in it.
2. Overview of Computer Laws
in the UK
According
to Feng, X., (2013), Computer users in the UK must be complied with the
following UK laws:
·
Communication
Act (2003): This
act granted more power to OfCom (Office of the Communication) to regulate the
media and communication service providers. Section 125 and 126 introduced that
improper use of public electronic communication network, possession or supply
of devices to break the law are punishable acts. It also introduced that using
unknown Wi-Fi broadband connection without its owner's permission is illegal (Legislation
Government UK, 2003). Evidence: On July 2005, the West London Court punished a
man with £500 and 12 months sentenced under Communication Act (2003) for using
others Wi-Fi without the owner's permission (BBC, 2005).
·
Human
Rights Act (1998): Article (10) under the Human Rights Act (1998)
facilitates that individual can express his/her own view, published article or
leaflet and communication through the internet though other people may not like
it and find it offensive. However, using offensive languages insulting to
others with the motive of targeting a racial or ethnic group can be
punishable. Journalists and any media
reporters will be free to express or criticize the government or political party
without fear. However, Article (8) can be used to punish the one’s , who is
involved in other' personal life which is considered to be disrespectful (Legislation
Government UK, 1998).
·
Privacy
and Electronic Communications Regulations (2003): It introduced that sending automated recorded messages through
telephone or mobile voice or SMS without prior permission of the user for the
marketing purpose is illegal (Legislation Government UK, 2003).
·
Computer
Misuse Act (1990): Under
this act, it is illegal to hack or introduce a virus to others' devices. Computer
Misuse Act (1990) or CMA (1990) Section 1-3 introduced the offenses as follows;
I.
Unauthorized
access to Computer material (Data or program);
II.
Unauthorized
access to Computer with intent to commit or facilitate serious crime;
III.
Unauthorized
modification of computer material;
People convicted
under this act may be sentenced for 6 months to 5 years and/or up to £5000 payments
could be imposed (Legislation Government UK, 1990).
·
The
Radio Equipment and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment Regulation (2000): Article 3.1 (a) introduced the protection of
health and safety of the user or any other person with respect to safety
requirements that must be met by all the equipments within the scope of the
directive. Article 3.3 (c) introduced certain conditions on the equipments
within the scope of the directive as follows; all the equipments must
incorporate safeguards to ensure that all the users' personal data protected
(Legislation Government UK, 2000).
[1]
Data
Protection Act (1998/2008): Data Protection Act (DPA) was intended to protect
individuals' personal information which is handled by an organization or by an individual
(Legislation Government UK, 2008).
[2]
Anti-Terrorism,
Crime and Security Act (2001): This legislation gives power to detain a foreigner indefinitely
without any charge who is a threat to the UK and cannot be deported under human
rights legislation. It was introduced after the 11th September attack and later
it was replaced by the Prevention Terrorism Act (2005) (Legislation Government
UK, 2005). It also gives power to detain a person who uses electronic devices
for a terrorism related activity.
[3]
Police
and Justice Act (2006): Police and Justice Act (2006), Part 5 includes the
Computer Misuse Act (1990) for a certain computer related offenses such as
deliberate attacks on a system to degrade the operation of a computer (Legislation
Government UK, 2006).
[4]
European
Law: European
Law is predominantly superior to its member states' legislation including the
UK legislation (Legislation Government UK, 1973).
[5]
Regulation
of Investigatory Power Act 2000: Regulation
investigatory power Act 2000 (RIPA 2000) is a supreme regulation which is governed
by the UK government and public authorities used to obtain information about
individuals and an organization if necessary (The Guardian, 2009). RIPA covers
a covert technique, which can be done, in accordance with human rights. RIPA 2000 covers some range of important
covert activities, which includes (Legislation Government the UK, 2000):
i.
Interception of
communication – this involves intercepting of peoples voice mails, text
messages, phone calls, etc.
ii.
Interception of
communication data – includes intercepting of phone bills, credit cards record
etc.
iii.
Acquiring of ciphered data
(encrypted data) – which involves any secret that relates to electronic data
e.g. PIN, password, etc.,.
iv.
Using of human covert
intelligence- involves the use of the undercover officer, an informant or
buying information concerning someone from a reliable source, which can be from
individuals in charge of the covert surveillance.
v.
Use of covert surveillance
on citizens
vi.
Use of intrusive
surveillance when necessary- it involves issues concerning private properties.
The
above listed powers for covert affairs were introduced to govern the nation and
for the safety of the citizens against terrorism, immigration issues, to
control disorder and for the stability of the UK economic (The Parliament
Publication UK, 2010). RIPA 2000 as said above is only meant for public
authorities such as the police and any legal investigatory organization. It
must be done with an approved warrant from the secretary of the state in
section 41 of RIPA 2000 with the list members of the authority that can be
given approval with proper application, and such warrants can only be granted in
case of national security or suspicious of serious crime (The Guardian, 2009
and Telegraph, 2013).
3. The UK Judicial System:
The
following figure shows the structure of the UK Judicial system. The UK legal
system is almost 1000 year evaluation of the legal system. UK Judicial System
lies on three pillars:
i.
Parliamentary
Sovereignty (The UK Parliament)
ii.
The
Separation of Powers
iii.
The
Rule of Law
The UK Parliament consists of the House of the Lords,
House of the Common and the Crown. The principal source of the UK law is the UK
Parliament. The separation of law is that a certain degree of independence
power to the functions, which are legislative (House of Lord), executive
(Cabinet) and judicial (The Judges) functions of government (Rivlin,
2004). The Rule of Law is defined as the
legal relationship between the citizens and state of the government.
Figure 1 : The UK Judicial System
Source: http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm67/6799/6799.pdf Judicial
Statistics, Annual Report 2005 (CM6799)
Apart from the principal source of UK law, there are
various laws making institutions such as The European Union Law making
institutions, the Courts,
Regulatory bodies and International
institutions. The UK law is subservience
to European Union Law after the UK has joined with the European Union on 1973 (Rivlin,
2004).
4. The Principles of Press
Regulation:
There is
a great need for the freedom of expression of the society, which is
independent, and it should be just. The media uses this right to inquire about
any influential body or story. It is self-regulating and runs free of any
statutory rules. The Press Complaint Commission (PCC) was formed by the Press
industry itself and it provides a guideline to the media professionals rather
than as laws. PCC has its own code of practice contains 16 articles covers a
wide range of issues, including harassment, intrusion, children, privacy,
accuracy, listening devices, confidential sources, discrimination payment for
articles (PCC, 2009). The balance of this action cannot be maintained just by
self-regulation and it has failed to, other systems are seemed to be working
well enough for the different industries and different authorities.
After the news of a murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler whose
phone had been hacked by the News of the World, the Prime Minister David
Cameron set up a public inquiry about the press ethics. A number of witnesses
had been heard by Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry during November 2011 and June
2012, who had all been also a victim of phone hacking and disturbing behavior.
A new system of press regulation was called for after Leveson published a 1987
page report in November 2012. The report also mentioned that the press made a
lot of people to face hardship and also
caused chaos for some innocent people and they have been looked down on their
rights and freedom (Castella, T., 2013).
To find out if a regulation is good enough we
need to take a look at the UK Better Regulation Task Force which was set up in
1997 and they laid out 5 principles of good regulation, which are used by the
Department of Business Innovation and Skills till today, saying that the
regulation must be:
• Transparent – it must be
open, simple and easy for all to understand and use.
• Accountable – this is in
subject to inspection by the public.
• Consistent – it must be
justly and precisely implemented.
• Targeted – it must be
attentive on the core of the problem.
• Proportionate – it must be
well balanced and must be executed when there is a genuine need for it and when
it is suitable to the nature and size of harm that might be caused and also the
cost involved must be clearly mentioned and minimized (Carnegieuktrust, 2011).
5.
RIPA 2000:
RIPA 2000 section 1 (1) describes
that unlawful interception of any such communication as public postal service
or public telecommunication service is offense. Section 1 (7) (a) and (b)
clearly indicates that a person who does that he/she will be punished up to 2
years sentenced or fine or both. Section 19 (4) introduced that a person who is
part of lawful interception authority and disclosing the information that
he/she received from those activities must be kept secret which is an offense
and liable to fine or sentenced up to 5 years or both. RIPA 2000 part 3 section
53 introduced that failure to comply with notice to disclose the key for protecting
information is an offense and a person or organization who does that will be
punished under this act up to maximum sentenced. In 2007, Clive Goodman and
Glen Mulcaire were convicted under RIPA 2000 and Computer Misuse Act 1990 for 4
months and 6 months accordingly due to intercepting the Royal family's
voicemails. Jeremy Young, a former Police officer was convicted and sentenced
for 27 months in 2007 due to various agencies including unlawful intercepting
communication under RIPA 2000.
Regulation
Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 established in 2000 to counter terrorism
and to protect the public. Where there is no authorization to perform a covert
affairs with regards to the right to human privacy, under the article 8 of the
European convention of human rights is considered
unlawful by virtue of section 6 of the human right act 1998 (Telegraph, 2013). Local
authorities are strongly recommended to obtain authorization under the power
Act 2000 where the surveillance is likely to interfere with human rights.
Several press reports about public authorities performing covert surveillance
affairs of individuals, with the misuse and implication of the power, and also
the unlawful interference of human privacy (Walsall Government UK, 2012). In
2008 BBC referred to the RIPA as “anti-terror law” because of the
misinterpretation of the report published (Walsall Government UK, 2012).
Several requests were forwarded to the councils concerning its affairs of
covert surveillance, access to communication data and the use of RIPA 2000
(Walsall Government UK, 2012).
Regular
internal report for RIPA 2000 was considered by the councillors to make sure
the RIPA 2000 are consistently adhered according to the council policy to
retain its purpose and no other further authorization beyond that (Telegraph,
2013). New policies and procedures were endorsed in RIPA 2000 on the 30 January
2012 by the Audit committee which requires new code of attestation made by surveillance
commissioner’s office as “the Senior
Responsible Officers’ roles and responsibilities, the role of members
particularly that of the Audit Committee, key personnel changes of officers
with authorizing responsibilities” (Democracy York Government UK, 2008). RIPA
2000 Sec (37) (38) introduced the protection of Freedoms Act 2012 which was
amended in 2012. It provides certain conditions to the local authorities and
they must be followed when they carry out those surveillances under RIPA 2000. According
to Brightbrotherwatch, (2011), from 2008 to 2010 there were 399 cases were
filed under the RIPA 2000 act. The same survey found that local councils abused
RIPA 2000 act for absurd reasons and wasting the taxpayer money. It also
discovered that only 4.6% of investigations produced prosecutions. Brightbrotherwatch,
(2011) concluded that local councils must not have RIPA 2000 power and if they
need it then they should have a permissions or warrant from the magistrate
court and the case must be investigated by the police not local councils.
When
RIPA 2000 was introduced, only nine public organizations were granted power but
now more than 1000 public organizations were granted power to intercept the
communication, which can create a serious threat to privacy and freedom. As we
discussed earlier, it is proved that misuse of this act is inevitable. By
removing the power of the local authorities and getting warrants from
magistrates can only reduce this serious issue. However, this act only be used
when there is a serious threat to the nation and not for civil cases.
6.
Computer Misuse Act 1990
Computer Misuse Act (CMA) established
in 1990 based on the controversy of two hackers R. V. Gold and Schifreen who
tried to connect and retrieve private information from a British telecom
organization (Edshare Soton, 2010) . Before CMA 1990 was introduced, there was
no law or punishment that governs such crime and was relatively free for a
hacker to hack into any system if he/she is capable of doing it (Gorril, M, 1998).
Though with the complex growth of technology in recent years after the
establishment of Computer misuse Act, CMA 1990 was amended as “The
Police and Justice Act 2006 received Royal Assent on 8 November 2006. Part 5 of
this Act contains amendments to the existing Computer Misuse Act 1990” to
suit the level of crime and also protect the privacy of citizens in the UK (The
CPS Government UK, 1990). CMA 1990 acts as a guide to many countries to adopt
such laws. The latest situation of CMA 1990 is that the CMA will be amended to
comply with the European Convention on Cybercrime with the maximum imprisonment
of 2 years and after the infamous NOTW phone hacking scandal, smart phones will
be amended as a computer device under the CMA 1990 act.
Although
this act is very strong enough and is in place, very few cases took place and
convicted for last 30 years. The problem is that most of the cases were being
occurred due to ignorance of not being aware of what happened. Tracing the
person who does this activity is very difficult and time consuming, however the
least of the damage cannot be retrieved even the offender is caught.
7. Computer related Cases from the Past at a Glance
There
are many people have been convicted and sentenced under cybercrime laws due to
various computer related wrongdoing such as stealing information and spreading
viruses. Metropolitan Service’s Central e-Crime unit had an investigation on
the issue of unauthorized access to an individual person’s Facebook account. Investigation
reveals that Crosskey, a 21 year old was sentenced to twelve months for hacking
an individual Facebook account intentionally. He was punished according to
Computer Misuse Act 1990 under Section 1 and Section 3, which depicts that he
intended computer to perform unauthorized access to data, which belongs to the
client held in the computer (Knowles, J., 2012). According to Hunt, K., (2013),
Lewys Martin, a computer hacker was sentenced to two years under Computer
Misuse Act 1990 Section1, 3, and 3A, who made repeated Denial of Service (DoS)
attacks on the websites of Kent police and Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Christopher
Weatherhead and his allies have been jailed up to 18months under Computer
Misuse Act 1990 section 3 for carrying out cyber-attacks on PayPal, Visa and
MasterCard with the help of DoS attacks. Judge Testar reveals that four people
are involved in this activity and among them two people have been jailed for
the attacks and one online assault and the third person was sentenced a
six-month prison and the sentencing of the fourth person was adjourned (Halliday,
J., 2013). Computer related wrongdoing would affect the businesses in a large
scale and computer bullies can lead an individual to the death as we have seen
many cases in recent times around the world.
James
Marks and James McCormick were convicted under CMA 1990 Sec 1 act as unauthorized
access into Sony music servers and downloaded loads of music track. They were
sentenced to 6 months imprisonment and had 100 hours of unpaid community
service. Junaid Hussain, a 18 year old hacker who hacked the Katy Kay, a former
Tony Blair's advisor Gmail account and accessed personal contacts and
published. He was convicted under CMA 1990 act and given 6 months youth
detention center (Purnell, B., 2012). Paul McLoughlin, a
student used Istealer to create the Trojan program and put them into a malware
program to gain the login credentials. He was convicted under CMA 1990 Sec 3A
(Leyden, J, 2011).
8. News of
the World
The News of the World was one of the
largest selling newspapers in the UK. It was also one of the old newspapers
sold in million copies in the UK from 1843 to 2011. Owned by the well-reputed
media firm News Limited in which Rupert Murdoch, the famous Media tycoon of
America, was a managing director, the News of the World was most famous for
publishing celebrity-oriented scandals and populist scoops. Over the years, the
newspaper exposed many national as well as local celebrities' sinful sexual
acts, drug abuse, and criminal activities by setting up journalists in various
disguises to ferret out both photographic and video evidence and hacking
phones. From 2006, NOTW was facing various allegations of its phone hacking
scandal and investigations revealed that NOTW was not only hacked the celebrity
phones' voicemail but also ordinary people'. It started to lose the battle
against the phone hacking scandal due to public outrages and it was closed on
10th July 2011. It led to have an inquiry on Media Regulation and amended smart
phone as Computer under Computer Misuse Act 1990 and raised a question on the Data
protection and privacy.
9. The Case Scenario
NOTW encountered a barrage of allegations
related to phone hacking lasting for a decade. It was claimed that NOTW hacked
the phones of several business personalities, politicians, celebrities,
well-known public figures, members of the British Royal family among others. Prince
Williams phone voice mails had been hacked by the NOTW' private investigator. The
police started their investigation and NOTW royal editor and private
investigators were convicted and sentenced to jail. The Guardian newspaper
published various articles about the NOTW phone hacking. Subsequently, the
police started their own investigation by the name of 'Operation Weetings'.
They discovered that NOTW hacked not only celebrities but also the relatives of
dead British soldier, victims of 7/7 London bombing and murdered schoolgirl
Milly Dowler in order to create a hot news on its publications. This discovery
made a public outrages and it led to the Lord Justice Leveson inquiry on Press
regulation and closing of NOTW. There are many employees of NOTW have been
arrested and a few have been convicted. The case is still on the court for the
hearing.
10. History of the Case:
It
was in 2005 that an article published in the News of the World revealed the
details of a meeting between Prince William and Tom Bradby, ITV royal
correspondent even before the meeting took place. When Prince William and
Bradby finally met, they tried to figure out how the information about a
potential meeting that was only known by two of them got leaked. Prince William
also showed concern as how recently his appointment with a knee surgeon got
leaked too. During the discussion, they realized that such personal information
could only get leaked if their phones were being hacked and their voicemails
intercepted. Following an investigation, it was discovered that the voicemails
of Prince William's aides were hacked into, leading to a leakage. Subsequently,
the royal editor of the News of the World, Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, a
private investigator were convicted of the offense and imprisoned. During the
court proceedings, it was revealed that besides Prince William, they also
hacked into the phones of other well-known public figures including supermodel
Elle Macpherson, MP Simon Hughes, publicist Max Clifford, football agent Skylet
Andrew and the Professional Footballers' Association's Gordon Taylor (BBC
News#1, 2007). Andy Coulson, the then editor of the News of the World soon
resigned taking responsibility for everything that happened.
Renewed Investigation: Though
apparently the case appeared resolved with the imprisonment of Glenn Mulcaire
and Clive Goodman and the resignation of Andy Coulson, but subsequent
investigations by police, newspaper and parliament showed evidence of a large
scale phone hacking. The Guardian newspaper came up with the report that
confidential settlement through the payment of up to £1m was done with three
people whose phones had been hacked to wrap up the case. In 2010, a series of
renewed investigation took place and it was discovered that the News of the World
targeted over 4,000 people for hacking phones (BBC News#3, 2012). Besides
celebrities and politicians, the newspaper hacked the phones of the relatives
of dead British soldiers, victims of the 7/7 London bombings and the murdered schoolgirl
Milly Dowler whose abduction and killing shocked the nation in 2002. The
revelation created a national public outcry against Rupert Murdoch and News
Corporation, resulting in the closure of the News of the World in 2011 (BBC
News#2, 2013).
11. Analysis of the Case:
Phone
hacking is a criminal offense and those involved in phone hacking may either
receive a fine or/and imprisonment. Furthermore, the victims of phone hacking
are allowed to sue the perpetrators of phone hacking for damages. Section 1 of
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) considers intentional
interception of communications carried out over a public telecommunication
system a felony unless there is a legal reason for investigators of Security
Services and Police to conduct the operation (The Drum, 2011). Section 3 of
RIPA also allows the victims of phone hacking to sue the culprits in the Civil
Courts. The Data Protection Act 1998
permits the prosecution of hackers for criminal activities including unlawful
ways of obtaining, disclosing and procuring personal information under section
55 (The Drum, 2011). Besides RIPA and DPA, charges could be brought against the
culprits of phone hacking for the violation of right to privacy.
Privacy
law in the UK is a mix of an individual's right to privacy as mentioned in
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Press, freedom of
expression as mentioned in the Article 10 of the same convention and the law of
confidentiality (The Drum, 2011). The question that needs to be addressed by
the court of justice is whether a person's right to privacy would get
precedence over the freedom of expression by the Press. The News of the World
case also has raised some moral and ethical issues related to the practice of
journalism, especially in the matter of voicemail interception of the deceased
girl Milly Dowler. After the disappearance of Milly Dowler when her family and
friends were frantically sending voice messages to her phone, the unlawful
interception and further deletion of important voice messages ruined potential
evidence that could have given the police officials a lead to her murderer.
Furthermore, the suffering of Milly's parents who got a false hope that Milly Dowler
was still alive due to the interception and deletion of the voicemails left on
her mobile cannot be ignored. Besides, hacking into personal phones of people
and disclosing information without their knowledge and consent is a completely
unethical act that, if practiced by any newspaper intentionally, is worthy of
severe punishment because the journalists and media persons in their bid to
compete for gaining higher circulation of their news copies subject their
victims to untold mental anguish and suffering.
12. How the Case has been unfolded
So far
The case
begins from the appointment of Rebekah Brooks as an editor of NOTW at the age
of 32 years on 2000. How the case has been unfolded year by year as follows and
those timeline information was collected from various sources such as BBC news,
the Guardian and other online materials;
2000: Rebekah
Brooks became the editor of the NOTW at the age of 32 and she was in the
head of controversial campaign of "Name and Shame" to seek the
suspected pedophiles. It was helping with the case of Sarah Payne who was murdered in July 2000.
2002: Milly
Dowler, who is 13 year old girl was missing on the way back to her home in
London on March 2002. NOTW was followed up this case by hiring private investigator Glenn Mulcaire who
was apparently snooping into Dowler's mobile phone voicemail and delete the old
voice mails to make more room for new voicemails. This act was leading to wrong
direction of the case and gave the false hope as she was still alive to
Dowler's family and the police investigations that.
2003: Rebekah Brooks and her deputy Andrew Coulson became the editor of the
Sun the NOTW respectively.
2005: NOTW published an information about Prince William's Knee injury and a
royal court has been set up a police investigation to find about voicemail snooping.
2006: The Private Investigator Glenn Mulcaire and
the Royal family editor of the NOTW Clive
Goodman were apprehended on the suspicion of the phone hacking and
sentenced to 4 and 6 months jail time respectively.
2007: Andrew Coulson resigned from the editor of
the NOTW by taking full responsibility of the Royal family phone hacking issue
on May 2007. He then became the Conservative Party's communications director
later in the same year. Murdoch's son James
Murdoch became the Chief Executive of the European and Asian operation of
the News Corporation on December 2007.
2009: Only July 2009, The Guardian published a
report about NOTW's phone hacking into politicians and celebrities. It accused
that News Corporation knew about intercepting voicemails in NOTW and it has
paid $1.6million for settlement of the dispute.
This led to the police investigation and the case was closed later without
sufficient evidence. Rebekah Brooks became a CEO of the News International.
2010: David Cameron became a Prime Minister of the
UK and Andrew Coulson became his Chief of Media. The New York Times published
an article that Andrew Coulson was aware of the phone hacking when he was
editor of the NOTW. NOTW has spent over
£2 million with victims of phone hacking scandal in order to settle the court
cases. Andy Hayman (Assistant Commissioner) who was in charge of the Scotland
Yard inquiry has left the police work and joined the News International as a
columnist.
2011: Due to the pressure from the public and the
media, Andrew Coulson has resigned from his position as a Chief of Media on
January 2011. The Scotland Yard announced that they are going to launch the new
investigation on NOTW's phone hacking culture. During this time, The Guardian
published a story about NOTW was involved in intercepting voicemails of 2005 terrorist
attacks' victims. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused the NOTW on
publishing his personal information that was received illegally. Andrew Coulson
and Clive Goodman were arrested under the charges of police bribery.
July 2011, Rupert Murdoch and his son were appearing in
front of the Parliament to testify that they had no knowledge of phone hacking
culture in their company. Brooks resigned as a CEO of the News International.
Continuing arrests of NOTW's Top executives and employees, July 10, 2011 NOTW
was issued in its last publication. NOTW parent company News Corporation
withdraws its takeover bid from BSkyB. NOTW sister concern Wireless Generation
lost its contract from New York State government project. Lord Justice Leveson
inquiry was open to the inquiry into journalist ethics.
2012: Various arrests were taking place under this
investigation during this period. Editors and reporters from the Sun, The Daily
Mirror, The Daily Star, The Sunday Mirror, The Daily Star Sunday, NOTW
reporters, editors and Police Officer were arrested.
2013: The trial was started for Rebekah Brooks and
Andy Coulson.
13. Conclusions:
The News of the World which was a
big selling newspaper in the UK came to its demise following the disclosure of
its unethical practice of hacking the phones of celebrities, politicians,
well-known public figures, family members of the dead British soldiers, 7/7
London bombing victims and the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Though the
case was apparently solved after the royal editor of the newspaper Clive
Goodman and a private investigator called Glenn Mulcaire were convicted and
imprisoned due to their involvement in the phone hacking of Prince Williams,
renewed investigation took place a few years later following a subsequent
revelation of evidence as regards a large scale operation of phone hacking by
the News of the World involving more than 4,000 victims. Phone hacking is a
criminal offense deserving of punishment either by fine or imprisonment or both
as per the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Computer Misuse
Act 1990, which also allows the victims of phone hacking to sue the culprits
for damages. Besides, phone hacking violates an individual's right to privacy
and right to confidentiality. When established newspapers and media tycoon like
Murdoch indulge in such unethical practice like hacking for the sake of gaining
a higher circulation of their news copies, exemplary punishment should be meted
out to deter such crimes in future.
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[16]Michael Gorrill The computer misuse act 1990. Available at: http://www.geek.org.uk/arny/cmuse.html .
[17]BBC News#2: Phone-hacking scandal: Timeline. 2013. BBC News. Viewed on
14th November 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14124020
[18]BBC News#3: Q&A: News of the World Phone-hacking Scandal. 2012. BBC
News. Viewed on 14th November 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11195407
[19]The Legal and Moral Issues Surrounding Phone Hacking by News of the
World. 2011. The Drum. Viewed on 14th November 2013 http://www.thedrum.com/news/2011/07/06/legal-and-moral-issues-surrounding-phone-hacking-news-world
[20]Wilkinson, Peter. 2012. Timeline of UK Phone Hacking Scandal. CNN.
Viewed on 14th November 2013 http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/19/world/europe/hacking-time-line
[21]Greene, Richard Allen. 2011. Murdoch's Scandal-hit News of the World to
Shut Down. CNN World. Viewed on 14th November 2013 http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/07/uk.phonehacking
[22]Deans, Jason. 2013. Surrey Police Contact with News of the World over
Milly Dowler – Timeline. The Guardian. Viewed on 14th November 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/24/surrey-police-news-of-the-world-milly-dowler
[23]http://thenextweb.com/uk/2012/05/17/uk-facebook-account-hacker-hit-with-12-month-prison-sentence/ ----By Jamillah Knowles, Thursday, 17 May '12 , 01:44pm
[24]http://www.kentonline.co.uk/east_kent_mercury/news/Computer-hacker-jailed-860/ ---Keith Hunt, 2013
[25]http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/24/anonymous-hackers-jailed-cyber-attacks-----Josh Halliday---2013
[26]http://www.computerevidence.co.uk/Cases/CMA.htm ---Michael J L Turner 1993 - 2013
[27]http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/TheGrimRIPA.pdf -----Sharpe, D--2011
[28]
[29]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/18/gaming_trojan_conviction/ --- John Leyden, 2011
[30]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/27/teen_hacker_six_months/---- Brid-Aine Parnell, 27th July 2012
[31]
[32]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24710506-----Tom de Castella 30th october 2013
[33]http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/getattachment/b495f78c-0c99-49cc-aa3c-8195563d9e2a/Regulation-of-the-Press.aspx ----- September 2011 (Regulation
of the Press
[35] http://siliconangle.com/files/2013/05/scam.jpg
[35] http://siliconangle.com/files/2013/05/scam.jpg
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