Phone Hacking: In Public Interest?

[paraffin]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8142047.stm

Do we as "Joe Public" have a right to know what politicians + "celebs" are twittering on about? Do "the authorities" need to know? Is it a breach of personal privacy?

Is it necessary in any way, shape or form?

[Gromit]

The Phone and internet companies have to keep a record and digital versions of every phone call and email, and websites visited by everyone in the country. This is a matter of law and was introduced as a counter terrorism measure.

It is not in the public interest for newspapers and their criminal friends to break the law and listen to anyone they like. The motive is not public interest it is greed, financial gain and the desire to sell more newspapers.

Fortunately, the sordid dealings at the News of the World have not tainted the reputation or job prospects of the editor at the time. The News of the World's former editor, Andy Coulson, now works as director of communications for the Conservative party

[Julnar]

It's an outrageous intrusion into the personal lives of celebrities and politicians and shouldn't be tolerated. As Gromit so rightly points out, it has nothing to do with the public interest and everything to do with profit and salacious gossip.

[Androcles]

It also raises the interesting question of fines or damages for wrongdoing such as this by newspapers. There are those that argue that giant fines or damages are out of proportion compared to compensation or fines for other things. But if you don't hurt these organisations where it really gets them, in the balance sheet, then it is so cheap they need not bother and can do anything!

[jake-the-peg]

It depends on the context.

It would have to be a pretty specific story that was being investigated with a strong public interest background.

It seems unlikely to be the case in this instance

[BertiWooster]

So Andy Coulson states as Editor at the time he did not know anything about these goings on
Yeah right !!!

As for Cameron saying he is ' relaxed' about it
What a hypocrite - i bet if it was a labour person , he would be calling for his resignation .

[socket2008]

The thing is, a log of everyone that has come on here posting is now on a database. Are you happy about that?

Welcome to nazi britain. Those poor souls that lost their lives in two world wars will be creaking in their coffins.

[jake-the-peg]

Socket this site is a database! it just has a web front end.

Almost everything on the net is on databases and they are backed up. Most everything is kept by someone. It's the way the net works - get used to it!

Try http://www.archive.org you can find what was on a given web page at a particular time.

[jno]

if they'd used this to uncover MPs' expenses claims everyone would be cheering. In fact those were uncovered by other means which seem equally illegal, but nobody seemed to mind.

[Gromit]

jno,

That was because any fool could see it was in the publics interest and the eventual redacted copies published proved that.

What Jade Goody had for dinner is not in the publics interest it is intrusion.

[jno]

I wasn't sure it was in the public interest at the time as the data were due to be published anyway. It wasn't until I saw how heavily they'd been 'redacted' that I finally changed my mind and started cheering the Telegraph. But the Telegraph couldn't have known about the degree of redaction at the time either, so they bought the stolen data for the same reason the NoW has done: to sell newspapers and make money.

[Gromit]

But the the imformation the Telegraph 'bought' exposed criminality which had previously not been admitted. Regardless of whether it was due to be published in the future, it was in the public interest at the time the Telegraph acquired it.

[jno]

well, I dunno, gromit, the actual criminality exposed was pretty slight - a couple of people claiming on mortgages they didn't have? (Apologies if I've forgotten other examples.) The rest included some ethical spivvishness, much sitcom hilarity about duck islands, and a fair amount of non-newsy stuff about grocery bills that were perfectly in order.

I'd have had no problems with the Telegraph printing just the criminal stuff. But printing everyone's expenses when they were due to be published anyway looks to me like the Telegraph just wanted a scoop - they paid so they could get in first. If Parliament's own publication of the expenses had been equally transparent, the Telegraph would have had great difficulty saying they'd done anything very much in the public interest. Fortunately for them, MPs' own mania for secrecy retrospectively justified the newspaper, which is when I agreed it had done the right thing after all. But I don't believe it was clear-cut at the time.