h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Surprise, surprise. Someone wasn't doing the job that they are paid for.

So he's jetted off home now.

It's looking good over all I think. The bskyb is totally dead in the water. And from bits I saw of today's debate just now, it came out about big questions to do with Cameron's judgement. It's to be seen how that plays out.

The Murdoch spell is at an end...whatever detail didn't come out yesterday. The main picture is now clear.

(I'm almost amused now about the pie throwing pantomime..how very British ).

>>..the Squidgy-tapes in 1992 - hacked telephone
conversation between Princess Diana and James
Gilbrey - the reporters all got pats on the back. <<

Thanks for that reality check.
I'd forgotten that.
Seems no on else remembers it either.
Haven't heard any one else talking about it.
When I mention it people go 'Oh, yeah...!'

Wonder what the difference is.
The change in media awareness?
A change in public attitudes?
The fact that Royals are fair game?

Interesting question.

~jwf~

The Millie Dowler hack was a game changer.

But I think Will and Kate have something to do with it. The new symbolic Royals that people feel protective about.

A few months ago some Sky tv presenters were caught saying sexist stuff and were forced to resign. They said there was a firestorm going on out there that forced their resignations.

I suspected the murky world of the 'British Establishment' was involved...I think that was the inference.

Thank gawd for it.

The squidgy tapes were an entirely different kettle of beefburgers.

Phones in those days were analogue, and broadcast the conversations being held in an unencrypted form. All you needed to do to listen in to them was
(a) own a scanner
(b) have it switched on an tuned to the right frequency when within the vague vicinity of one of the conversants.

It could be defended as an *almost* entirely passive activity which by its nature can't be targeted exclusively at an individual. Like overhearing a conversation in a pub toilet because you were sitting in one of the cubicles. Now, obviously, reporters were in the habit of metaphorically sitting in cubicles in pubs they knew Diana was in a LOT. But nevertheless, their actions were passive and non-intrusive - except inasmuch as Diana was followed a lot, but she got that from photographers

The step-change came with digital mobile phones in the late nineties. Suddenly the phones didn't broadcast in the clear any more - the signal is compressed and encrypted and you can't simply tune in a radio and hear it. Now, in order to hear someone's messages, you need to decide to hack their voicemail, then get a phone and DO it. You don't sit and wait and hope some juicy information comes to you, you go out and TAKE it.

Frankly, given what we knew about how insecure analogue mobiles were, I felt Squidgy and Tampon had it coming to them. There is no possible argument that ANYONE who has had their voicemail hacked deserved it in ANY way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/20/andy-coulson-security-clearance-checks

"Andy Coulson was granted only mid-level clearance, so avoiding the most rigorous security checks into his background"

Answers a question I've been wondering about for a long time. I'd like to know what information he was party to that was above his level of clearance...

That information is above your level of clearance...

Anybody heard anything from Ed Balls?

He's gone *very* quiet hasn't he?

A sort of < "What happened next" Balls, >

Well, yes, he has gone quiet, but so is the rest of the Labour front bench. But is there any need for them to speak up? The other Ed seems to be making all the running at the moment, and if the leader is in the spotlight, drawing attention to yourself is bad form, surely?


Geggs

Mrs Balls (Yvette Cooper) doesn't seem to be following that line though - she's on every news programme going.

I'm just curious because Balls was previously seen as Labour's most effective speaker when criticising the Tories.

Labour are in opposition. I'm more interested in knowing the facts and truth about those actually apparently running the country.

The Old Etonian doesn't inspire confidence for me. I bet even in his dotage, Rupert has a good laugh about him

But maybe over his summer holls he'll discover new qualities he never knew he had.

Is it possible that they are attending to more important issues before they shut down for the summer break that has already been disrupted ?
Having got political/legal satisfaction on the Murdoch issues any change in real life will be a long time coming. In the mean time another issue that the establishment should already be aware of will come to top and demand an answer to the question of whether they should *jump* or wait until they are *pushed*.
The state of the Euro may cause them to jump whilst promised *united* interjection in our economic affairs may well *push* them into action.
Of course throughout all this people will be falling into the category of fuel poverty, young people will be kept in school when they should be working, and old people will going along with their pension hoping that it is secure and that any tax they pay will be well spent.
I could go on but swl may become abusive.

*wisely* is missed from the end of the penultimate paragraph.

>>..an entirely different kettle of beefburgers.
..tuned to the right frequency when within the vague
vicinity of one of the conversants.
It could be defended as an *almost* entirely passive activity
which by its nature can't be targeted exclusively at an individual.<<

So if I steal money from an unlocked cashbox
it's not the same crime as busting a lock to
get at the cash?
Or, it's OK to commit offense upon strangers but
not to target known victims?

I do thank you for your analysis. The distinction you make
really does clarify the situation. But I'm not sure if tech
change should be allowed to modify our moral responses.
It's curious that the usual liberalisation of our ethics caused
by new tech is quite reversed in these circumstances and
we have become more intolerant and righteous.

~jwf~

Are those who avoid tax greater criminals than those who actively claim more from legitimate tax payers ?

"if I steal money from an unlocked cashbox
it's not the same crime as busting a lock to
get at the cash? "

That's not an accurate analogy though, is it?

A more accurate analogy would be walking behind someone who is disconcernedly scattering cash in their wake. Is it even a crime to pick it up? If we say it's a crime to pick it up and not give it back to them, if we agree it's a crime to pick it up at all, we must surely agree it's a significantly different and lesser crime than actively stealing their wallet.

The technology that led to Squidgy and Tampon was a technology where people broadcast private conversations over unencrypted channels, allowing anyone who was interested and in range to pick them up.

That technology has gone away, and anyone who wants to access someone else's phone messages can't just sit there with a scanner and hope someone in range says something interesting - they have to *actively* seek out the information and overcome security protocols to get it. That, to me, makes it a morally different and much, much worse crime, if indeed the former is morally wrong at all.

My understanding of how the "Squigygate" recordings came to be made is a matter of some measure of ongoing controversy. I don't really have a view, but it's worth noting that there doesn't appear to be a consensus.

"A more accurate analogy would be walking behind someone who is disconcernedly scattering cash in their wake."

I'm not sure that's an accurate analogy either. If someone drops money, their interests are already harmed regardless of my actions. A closer analogy would be for me to pick up their money and then put it to a use which would damage their interests.

The way I see it, if it's wrong to hack voicemails for the purposes of producing titillating news stories, it's also wrong to use intercepts of private phone calls for that purpose. I don't see that it matters if one is easier than the other to obtain.

Now granted, it is possible in principle to intercept and record a particularly private phone call by accident. So I guess it's possible in this case to have an unsolicited temptation placed in your path - just as with jwf's analogy of the unlocked cash box. So we might judge someone who succumbed to temptation less harshly than someone who went out of their way to deliberately do wrong (breaking into the cashbox, hacking the phone). However, that's about the relative culpability of the offender, not about the rightness or wrongness of the action.

So I think jwf's question about 'what's changed' is a good one. And I think Effers is on to something.... it's hard to remember now, but Diana was not seen in the same way during her life as after her death. Perhaps there would be a different reaction to today's royals, but then no-one seemed that outraged about the original detected hack, which was on royalty.

My theory is that there's a general rule that the famous are pretty much fair game. Some people may still defend their right to privacy, but for most people, yeah, but... meh. When it's ordinary people, though, who never courted celebrity but who became household names as a result of tragedy, or families of dead soldiers.... well, that's different.

Yeah, I wasn't that happy with the scattering money analogy either, for that reason - if you drop money, you've lost something, whether the amount you've lost is relevant to you or not. (I recall Sting being, well, stung by his accountant for several millions of pounds, and he simply didn't notice the money had gone. That concept boggles my mind a bit.)

Either way, I do think there's a qualitative, moral difference between listening in on a conversation being broadcast in the clear and deliberately hacking into something to listen to a private message. The subsequent use of that information is another question entirely. It's already been demonstrated that the public doesn't really give a monkey's if Huge Grant's mobile messages are hacked, but if Milly Dowlers are, the regardless of whether that's subsequently used to run a story, there's MAJOR revulsion and outrage, rightly. (There *should* be revulsion and outrage at Mr. Grant's privacy being invaded, but we're hypocrites, I guess...).

The very act of hacking is what's causing the moral revulsion here, and it's the active nature of it that's the problem, I think. Listening in on a conversation that's being broadcast is, once you've acquired a scanner, an essentially passive act.

Purely emotionally, if you'll allow, the hacking I would describe as a form of 'rape'. If it was done to me..it would have major consequences for mental health..however insignificant the thing hacked.

I don't quite feel the same about the other method. The 'invasion' aspect of hacking is really something I find hard to think about. But Murdoch hacked our whole culture for years really IMO.

Diana spoke about the way photographers would move their lenses up and down her body as she walked along. She of course used the media for her own purposes, and was no saint..but really the whole atmosphere of invasion of people in various ways is what marks out the Murdoch press for me. Yes such tactics can be good in unconvering corruption. But it all got way out of control.