Hacking the Phone of a Thirteen Year Old Girl

(Via CJR)

I'm probably guilty of ignoring the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal overseas. I mean, it's overseas (the Brits are handling it) and it involves rich and powerful people (who presumably have the money and connections to make NewsCorp pay). The short form is that NewsCorp tabloids in Britain have paid private investigators to hack into the phones of famous people- and that the authorities had tried to give them a pass on it until their efforts were discovered.

All pretty horrid. But again, I've had other things on my mind.

But this is pretty damn horrid:

[Milly] Dowler, a thirteen-year-old from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, went missing in the spring of 2002 on her way home from school. Six months later she was found murdered, dumped naked in the woods.

In the meantime, the Guardian reports, the News of the World had paid its crooked private investigators to hack into Milly’s cellphone and listen to her voicemails:

As her friends and parents called and left messages imploring Milly to get in touch with them, the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word.

Oh, it gets worse. That’s merely abhorrent and illegal. This, on the other hand, is downright evil:

But the journalists at the News of the World then encountered a problem. Milly’s voicemail box filled up and would accept no more messages. Apparently thirsty for more information from more voicemails, the paper intervened - and deleted the messages that had been left in the first few days after her disappearance. According to one source, this had a devastating effect: when her friends and family called again and discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Milly herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive. But she was not. The interference created false hope and extra agony for those who were misled by it.

Right. So, not content with merely illegally hacking into the voicemail of a thirteen year old girl - they saw fit to destroy her data (read: evidence) so they could continue to eavesdrop on people trying to contact her.

Holy. Fricking. Hell.

Late Edit:
The Awl's Alex Balk points out a great primer on the whole phone hacking mess.

It gets so much worse... after the News of the World hacked into the girl's phone (and gave her family the false impression that she was still using her phone), they went further:

Later [Milly's] family granted the News of the World an exclusive interview, where they discussed their sense of hope - without any knowledge of the fact that it was that very newspaper's interference which had misled them.

Asshats, with a capital "A"

The article's author, Ian Dunt, is less than optimistic that this scandal has run its course.:

It is highly unlikely that the News of the World was the only newsroom to indulge in the practise [of hacking phones].