Fleet Street screwing
WHERE SHALL WE START? How about this for a headline? "News of the World royal editor released on bail". Had he been found in a compromising position with a corgi on Hampstead Heath? Or was he trying to peddle photos of the dying Lady Di? No. "Clive Goodman, who is suspended from his job, is accused of one count of conspiring to intercept voicemail messages and eight counts of intercepting them between January 1 last year and August 9 this year." Hacking Prince William's phone, in other words. If he is convicted of breaching the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, Goodman faces a maximum of two years in prison.
MEANWHILE, The Sun reported: "Harry was also snapped canoodling with pretty blonde Natalie Pinkham, while saucily groping her BOOB with one hand." And it then it turned out that the story was a cobbler's job of venues and dates, so it apologized, sort of, saying: "We accept that the nightclub was the Purple nightclub and not Boujis as we said and the photographs were taken in autumn 2003 and not summer 2006." But it gets better. The Daily Mail then lifted the photos the Sun had run and printed them the next day. Seeing that they're being valued at £250,000, this bit of piracy may cost the Mail a lot.
ANYWAY, SCREWING. How's it done. Well, according to the Press Gazette, "phone screwing" (voice message hacking) is "extremely prevalent among the Sunday tabloids". See, says a tabloid editor, "Most people who have mobile phones don't change the factory setting on their voicemail — it could be four zeros or 1234, something very simple like that. You might try using their birthday or something like that if they have changed the setting." An ex-News of the World staffer the Press Gazette that the practice was so prevalent on the paper when they were there that journalists even did it to each other: "When I was on the paper there was a war between the features department and news. Features would hack into the phone of somebody who was on the newsdesk to see what story they might be working on."
SO, LET'S SAY YOU WANT TO DO A STORY ON A CELEBRITY. Difficult? Nah, dead easy. Most private investigators can get hold of phone records because they have people in the phone companies who can bring up the records and pass them on. For a fee, of course. Naturally, you have to pay the private eye, but this can be pushed through the accounts department as expenses of some kind. Is our celeb having a new relationship? All you need do now is check who she's calling late at night. You have access to her phone records, remember, so you can just call the number she's been calling and, because you can "screw", it's easy to see what sort of voice mail messages she's leaving. Hold the front page! Exclusive! Screw you!
