Call for police chief to quit over meeting with ex-'NOTW' (Rupert Murdoch's) editor

[Snoutport]

Source: Independent U.K.

John Yates, the senior police officer embroiled in the phone hacking affair, yesterday faced a call to step down after he told MPs that there was no reason for him to reveal a recent social engagement with a former senior executive at the News of the World.

In a letter to the Commons media select committee, Assistant Commissioner Yates, who oversaw a review of the heavily-criticised original Scotland Yard investigation into the scandal, confirmed that he had attended a "private engagement" in February this year with Neil Wallis, the deputy editor of the Sunday tabloid until 2009

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/call-for-police-chief-to-quit-over-meeting-with-exnotw-editor-2275774.html

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This is the cop who has been handling the coverup of Rupert Murdoch's phone hacking. When he is gone I think the floodgates will open!

[ikri]

1. The bigger scandal in all of this

Has been just how friendly the police have been with the News of the World. They've basically been paying the police for exclusive information on ongoing cases which has led to the police either looking the other way or going easy on them when they've been caught doing something very illegal.

[Snoutport]

2. Not to mention hiring the people who were covering up the story in the first place!

I think this should be a good week in the hacking story....the police are trying to notify all 4000 people and that should be a mighty interesting list!

[lonestarnot]

3. !

[sabrina 1]

4. Not sure I understand your post. Are you referring to 4,000

people who were victims of the hacking?

I wonder if this was how the tabloids got those tapes of Princess Diana, and Charles? How long have they been doing this, does anyone know?

And it is shameful that the police were involved. I hope all who were lose their jobs at least, the public must feel really protected knowing their law enforcement works for the tabloid king, rather for them.

[ikri]

6. 4000 Additional Potential Victims

People who should have been notified of the hack years ago when it was first investigated but were deemed unimportant.

The Charles & Diana tapes were made using some pretty basic equipment back when the mobile network was still analogue, anyone with some $50 radio scanning equipment could easily pick up the unencrypted conversations.

The actual "hack" here is pretty simple. Everyone's voicemail is set up to be protected with a pin number, except 9 out of 10 people never bother changing the default pin usually '0000' or '1234'. Most people probably don't (or didn't) realise that you can access your voicemail from a different telephone number where you can then enter your normal number before entering your pin number and listening to your messages, except with most voicemail boxes not actually being pin protected with anything more than the default. So if you knew the phone number of someone famous or interesting you stood a good chance of being able to phone up & gain access to their messages with consummate ease.

[sabrina 1]

8. Thank you.

So, this could happen to anyone, if someone wanted to listen in on them.

I don't think most people would have known this though. I'm surprised that public figures would not have been given the information.

I hope this takes down Murdoch's empire.

[ikri]

10. The phone companies wouldn't necessarily know

In many cases the phone contracts may have been taken out in the names of holding companies or agents so the name of the celebrity involved wouldn't be visible to prying eyes within the phone companies themselves.

There's still no requirement for pin numbers to protect voicemail so whilst more people will now be aware of the problem, most are still probably blissfully unaware that there's even an issue since the media still keep going on about "hacking" which makes it sound far more sophisticated than it really is.

[Snoutport]

13. Consider also that the phone companies only have to hold their records so long

the police have basically blocked the investigation long enough that much of the proof the phone companies held will have been dumped.

[Snoutport]

9. A couple of employees of Murdoch's papers have already gone to jail for hacking Harry and Williams

phones and it was recently found out they were hacking Beatrice and Eugenie as well. Not to mention members of Parliament. Murdoch's papers were using the info to take down liberal politicians and supporting their conservative replacements. The police got called in but there has been a huge coverup that goes all the way up in Murdoch's paper empire as well as all the way up in English govt.

[ikri]

11. Yup

Looking back, there are a few stories that have appeared over the past few years that now look like the information may have come originally from the hacking - John Prescott (the deputy Prime Minister at the time) was caught having an affair, how did that information come to notice?

There's also been some suggestions that NewsCorp may have been using the information they gathered from the voicemail as leverage against politicians to push their own agenda but no proof of that has really emerged yet.

[sabrina 1]

12. Thanks, I hope they get Murdoch himself. I doubt they will

but I also doubt he would have any problem with anything his employees did to take down liberals.

[malaise]

5. Bye Bye yates

You're fired

[Uncle Joe]

7. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Snoutport.