An extraordinary statistic from the Metropolitan Police. If correct it shows a truly industrial hacking operation.
Day 52: News International staff or contractors made more than 6,000 calls to voicemail inboxes before police smashed the phone hacking operation at the News of the World, the phone hacking trial heard today.
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Remember according to CPS files released at the trial hacker Glenn Mulcaire made £1m from News International over the years. This is some of his work from 11,000 pages of notes.
Day 51: Glenn Mulcaire carried out only a dozen hacks or attempted phone hacks during Rebekah Brooks’s editorship of the News of the World, the phone hacking trial heard today.
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The disclosure about fiddling expenses does indeed happen. The question is did the story come from a source or hacking or both?
Day 50, Part 1: A former News of the World reporter insisted today that Andy Coulson had hired him to hack phones. Dan Evans said he had told Mr Coulson, then the NoW’s editor, about his skills in voicemail interception during a job interview at a London hotel.
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Dan Evans admits ” flawed recollection” as Andy Coulson’s lawyer demolishes the detail of his evidence – but he insists the encounter over hacking with Coulson took place even if it was a different day.
Day 49, Part 2: A long-serving News of the World reporter has admitted making mistakes in his allegations about Andy Coulson’s involvement in phone hacking. At the start of his four-day testimony this week and in his police statement, Dan Evans said he had played the message left by Sienna Miller to Mr Coulson and another journalist at the NoW’s offices in Wapping on Tuesday 27 September 2005.
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More interesting stuff about bad journalism including making up quotes as Dan Evans faces a tough cross examination about his evidence.
Day 49, Part 1: Journalists on the News of the World often made up quotes for publication in stories, former NoTW reporter Dan Evans told the phone hacking trial today. Asked about comments from “friends” of Sienna Miller in a NoTW story, Evans said that it might come as a shock to the court but not everything in a tabloid newspaper was the “nailed-on” truth.
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This is tragic as well as scandalous. A journalist who says he is employed to illegally hack people in desperation to get a scoop. ends up drinking and taking cocaine. Sad reflection on the fate of some people in our profession.
Day 48, Part 2: A phone-hacking journalist told the Old Bailey today that he became so depressed at the News of the World that he “self-medicated” with cocaine. Giving evidence at the phone hacking trial, Dan Evans estimated that while at the NoTW he used cocaine “every couple of weeks.”
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Dan Evans’ admission that he lied in a witness statement about hacking a News of the World target in a previous breach of privacy claim is very interesting. Particularly when he claims in reply to cross examination from Andy Coulson’s QC that he had been caught up in an ” enormous conspiracy” to hide the truth that the News of the World was engaged in large scale phone hacking.
Day 48, Part 1: Self-confessed phone hacker Dan Evans admitted lying when he was giving evidence to a court about his attempted voicemail interception of a News of the World target, the Old Bailey heard today.
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This extraordinary evidence from Dan Evans, who worked for the Sunday Mirror and News of the World dramatically changes the atmosphere . He alleges that phone hacking was rife at both the News of the World and Sunday Mirror – dragging the Trinity Mirror group into the hacking scandal alongside the Rupert Murdoch empire.
Day 46, Part 2: Phone hacking was rife at the Sunday Mirror and the News of the World and senior journalists were fully aware of the practice, a phone hacking ‘supergrass’ told the Old Bailey today.
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Great blog from a man everyone interested in the hacking trial should follow. @peterjukes gives a blow by blow account of the video evidence being used by the prosecution against Rebekah Brooks, Charlie Brooks and the head of security Mark Hanna. A must for aficionados who follow the inside story of the Murdoch Empire
The CPS today released video evidence from Count 7 in the phone hacking trial, of CCTV from the London residence of Rebekah and Charlie Brooks at Thames Quay in Chelsea, for the 17th and 18th of July 2011 – starting the Sunday Brooks was arrested and the Chelsea property searched.
According to testimony from the MD of International Corporate Protection, William Geddes, his personal security operative ended up calling the whole affair ‘Pizzagate’.
About half an hour of video – which showed a static Black Audi in the underground car park – has been edited out from the raw footage because it wasn’t shown to the jury. The remainder is the subject of evidence, contained in my tweets from Court 12 at the end Monday January 13th, and much of the testimony today Tuesday January 14th.
I’ve included specific CCTV tweets below, but not related call data.
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David Hencke comment: There is a delicious irony in this evidence that top News International executives accused of authorising hacking and payments to officials should be so paranoid themselves about spying that are continually sweeping their offices and homes for bugs and end up being videoed on a private security camera in an underground car park.
By Martin Hickman
Rebekah Brooks’s husband was filmed by closed-circuit cameras going into the basement of an apartment block with an envelope and a laptop – and returning a few seconds later without either.
CCTV pictures of Charlie Brooks were shown to the jury at the phone hacking trial as evidence of an alleged plot by the Brooks’s to hide evidence from detectives investigating hacking at the News International.
The footage was shot at 12.14pm on 17 July 2011, 12 minutes after Mrs Brooks was arrested on suspicion of intercepting voicemails while at the News of the World.
According to the prosecution, Mrs Brooks, Mr Brooks and NI’s head of security, Mark Hanna, plotted together to pervert the course of justice between 14 July and 19 July 2011.
Mark Bryant-Heron, for the prosecution, gave the jury at the Old Bailey a timeline of the events of 17 July.
In the morning, he said, Mrs Brooks and a security guard had travelled by car from Enstone in Gloucestershire to Lewisham police station in London where she was due to be questioned. Another associate of hers followed in a second car.
At 12.02pm, shortly after she arrived at the police station, Mrs Brooks was arrested.
The court was then shown a short burst of CCTV footage from 11.52am showing Mr Brooks and his solicitor Angus McBride arriving at Chelsea Harbour in London where the Brooks’s had a flat.
In further CCTV pictures timed at 12.14pm – 12 minutes after the arrest of his wife – Mr Brooks was seen entering the basement car park of the complex.
After apparently loitering momentarily by a pillar, Mr Brooks walked around the pillar and toward the camera carrying a Jiffy bag and a laptop computer. He then disappeared from view.
A few seconds later, at 12.15pm, Mr Brooks walked back past the camera and towards the pillar empty-handed, without the bag or the laptop.
Closing his remarks for the afternoon, Mr Bryant-Heron said that the jury would see further CCTV footage tomorrow.
Mrs Brooks, Mr Brooks and Mr Hanna deny conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
This post originally appeared on http://hackinginquiry.org website last night.
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