NEW YORK – 
Bugging by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid even reached a former deputy prime minister. Clive Irving on how Scotland Yard investigators messed up—and the wider ethical concerns.
In London the firestorm over telephones being bugged by reporters from Rupert Murdoch’s saucy tabloid, the News of the World, just escalated. This is becoming one of those scandals where the more the perpetrators want to bottle it up the more it won’t stay bottled.
Wednesday night Scotland Yard, which was put in charge of investigating the case, was forced to admit that the paper had targeted the phones of many more people than it first thought—including a former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. In fact, Scotland Yard itself is becoming as much a part of the story as the News of the World.
The News of the World hacking raises wider concerns than just the ethics of tabloid journalism and the complicity of executives at Murdoch’s papers.
Two previous inquiries by the Yard were suspiciously casual, and in view of what has since emerged were more like white washes than investigations.
The latest investigation is led by a feisty woman, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who seems determined to clear up the mess left by her male predecessors—no matter who gets embarrassed in the process.
Wednesday night she sent out an email to people whom she now suspects had been targets—as many as 20 of them. (Previously the Yard had put the number at 10 or 12). She even said that some public figures had been misled by the Yard when seeking assurance they had not been bugged.
The case of John Prescott is particularly poignant.
This larger-than-life rumbustious politician was Tony Blair’s essential lifeline to the working class roots of the New Labour party. Blair himself had a famously tin ear for the old-time grass roots faction. Prescott flaunted the perks of office, being dubbed “Two Jags Prescott” because he owned two Jaguar luxury sedans. And in 2006 he admitted to having an affair with one of his secretaries.
The new evidence turned up by the Yard apparently shows that Prescott’s phone was hacked in the month that he confessed to this affair.
Politicians I have spoken to here in London now believe that the News of the World hacking raises wider concerns than just the ethics of tabloid journalism and the complicity of executives at Murdoch’s papers.
First, there is the issue of Scotland Yard’s serial bungling—or, worse, of its self-restraint for fear of annoying a powerful media baron. And second there is the issue of how secure the phone conversations of senior ministers are. Tabloid reporters are not particularly regarded as masters of technology. If they can bug the mighty so easily, what about the real pros working for foreign governments or terrorist groups?
Clive Irving is senior consulting editor at Conde Nast Traveler, specializing in aviation—find his blog, Clive Alive, at CliveAlive.Truth.Travel.
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Nick Brown, the former chief whip and key political ally of former prime minister Gordon Brown, became the latest public figure yesterday to say that he believes his private calls and messages were eavesdropped.
The Newcastle MP revealed that he believes his landline was the subject of an “amateurish” bugging operation around the time his homosexuality was made public in 1998.
Five years later, he was also approached by police investigating voicemail hacking claims and warned that his mobile phone may have been illegally accessed. The former Cabinet minister is the latest senior Labour figure to come forward with claims that his phone calls and messages were hacked. Tessa Jowell, the former culture secretary, revealed that her phone may have been accessed as recently as this week and she has hired lawyers to discover who hacked into her messages on 29 separate occasions in 2006.
Although it is not known in both cases who was responsible for the hacking, the claims will further fuel the phone hacking scandal engulfing the News of the World (NOTW), which is now the subject of a new police investigation following the decision of the Sunday paper to sack its head of news, Ian Edmondson.
Mr Brown, who was chief whip in the Commons for Tony Blair when he first came to power in 1997, said that his suspicions were raised following a conversation from a landline with an “important” person while his sexuality was still unknown. The MP said: “I picked up a landline telephone very quickly to make another call straight away. And the line clicked and then I heard my last conversation played back to me, which was quite eerie.
“I got on to British Telecom straight away. They said the line showed every sign of having been intercepted manually, not through scanners. It was an amateurish attempt involving the physical intervention of the line with a recording device.”
He added: “The engineer thought a recording device had been set to record calls automatically. I have no idea who did it but it was clearly not the intelligence services. I assume it was someone acting for a newspaper.”
Mr Brown, who also served as agriculture secretary, revealed he was gay after a former lover approached the NOTW offering to sell his story. In a speech to farmers the day after he confirmed his sexuality, the then minister put on a brave face, saying: “The sun is out – and so am I.” There is no evidence that the NOTW was responsible for the bugging operation.
Mr Brown added that he was then approached by an unnamed police force in the west of England in 2003 who told him that they were pursuing a phone-tapping prosecution and he was one of those who may have been targeted. The case collapsed when it reached court and full details of the allegations were never disclosed.
The MP said: “Given that it was near [Prince Charles’ home] Highgrove, my assumption was that this might involve the Royal Family. But I was never explicitly told that.”
Mr Brown, regarded as a staunch supporter of Gordon Brown, who has made public his own concerns that his phone was hacked while he was chancellor, called on Scotland Yard to make a greater effort to ensure such crimes did not take place again. He said: “The only people who can properly inquire into this are the police and they are right to review everything.”
A growing number of public figures have come forward recently claiming they were targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective who was jailed in 2007 along with the NOTW’s then royal editor, Clive Goodman, for illegally accessing the voicemails of member of the royal household.
The television actress Leslie Ash and her husband, Lee Chapman, the former footballer, said they were planning to sue after records of phone numbers belonging to the couple and their children were found on notebooks seized at the home of Mr Mulcaire.
BY ERICA VIRTUE Sunday Observer writer virtuee [at] jamaicaobserver [dot] com
Sunday, January 09, 2011
In the face of increasing claims by local law enforcement officials that criminals are using cellular phones to assist in the commission of serious crimes, controversy continues to swirl around whether the police should have more far-reaching powers to bug the phones of suspected criminals.
Although more reliance is now being placed on telecommunications technologies, long used by other jurisdictions to trap suspected wrong-doers, wiretapped evidence remains excluded from Jamaican courts unless it is being used to corroborate evidence already in place.
Wiretapped evidence is also inadmissible in Jamaican courts if permission to place the bug was not given by a High Court judge.
In contrast, state-sanctioned eavesdropping on phone conversations is a facility widely used by the United States in its pursuit of wrongdoers.
Information in the possession of the Sunday Observer showed that between January 2004 and March 2005, ‘Big Brother’ eavesdropped on 4,000 phones calls into and out of five different countries — one of them being Jamaica — in an effort to trap suspected drug-traffickers, including five Jamaicans. These were calls made to 94 different suspected drug dealers’ phones.
Executive director of local human rights lobby group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ), Dr Carolyn Gomes, accepts law enforcement officials referencing telephone conversations in order to corroborate evidence in a criminal matter.
“The simple answer is no, I do not have a problem with them checking for usage rather than listening in. Even with that there are some questions of privacy, but that may be easier to live with for the time being,” Gomes told Sunday Observer.
However, she is vehemently opposed to anything making it easier for the police to bug the phones of average Jamaicans. According to Gomes, being able to hold private conversations is a fundamental and constitutional right, and “everyone should be able to hold their personal and private conversations without law enforcement listening in”.
“I support the use of more and better technology, but no to more bugging,” Gomes insisted.
Former police commissioner-turned-politician Lucius Thomas, while supporting citizens’ right to privacy, said the police must be given the necessary means available to fight crime.
“There is a huge volume of work involved in intercepting telephone calls. So you would want to target the individuals involved in crimes such as murders and drug trafficking, which itself has led to murders,” Thomas told Sunday Observer.
“But I am one of those who support the information flow that you need to use the technology to enhance the investigative skills of the police officers. So I would want the police to have greater access to individuals suspected of being great security risks to the country,” Thomas said.
He complained that the process of securing the warrant was tedious and once acquired, the document carried an expiry date.
“Given what law enforcement is all about; given the advancement in technology and given the criminals’ access both local and otherwise, and with the advent of the Internet and cyber-crimes, I believe that police should have easier and greater access to the phones of those individuals,” Thomas insisted.
On the other hand, Assistant Police Commissioner Les Green said the police have adequate powers to wiretap and he was satisfied with what currently existed.
“I do not see the current process involved in securing the warrant for wiretaps being too onerous,” Green told Sunday Observer. He also said that recent amendments to the existing laws have made it easier for the police to tap the phones of suspected criminals.
“I dare say what we have needs a bit of fine tuning, but it’s for us to use the powers that we have,” he said.
The wiretap law, which was passed by the Senate in February 2002, allows the security forces to apply to a Supreme Court judge for an order to intercept the electronic communication of people suspected of involvement in drug trafficking, terrorism, murder, treason, kidnapping or abduction, gun-running and money laundering.
Twenty-eight days after permission is obtained, the police must re-apply for the wiretaps to continue being used.
Prior to that, there was no legislation regulating wiretaps and the authorisation for bugging people’s phones came from the prime minister after a submission from the national security minister, following a request from the security forces.
The then administration moved to change the system after a scandal in 2000 when a civilian-led intelligence group that operated within the police organised crime unit apparently went on a freelance wire-tapping spree. A number of politicians were alleged to have been among the people whose phone conversations were intercepted.
The intelligence group’s head, Roderick ‘Jimmy’ McGregor, having first denied it, later admitted to the illegal wiretaps, which led to the downfall of some police officials and the unit being disbanded.
Former Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin is supporting the position offered by Green.
“We can only use wiretapped evidence to corroborate other evidence in the hands of investigating authorities. It cannot be used as ‘stand-alone’ evidence. And there is really nothing stopping the local police from using wiretap evidence in regular policing duties,” Lewin said in a Sunday Observer interview.
“But, if the current system isn’t busted, then there is no need to fix it,” he suggested.
When the United States used wiretap evidence to make the case against former Tivoli Gardens don, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, it led to a quarrel between Kingston and Washington and a refusal by Jamaica to extradite Coke, who the US had indicted on drug-trafficking and racketeering charges.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding later insisted that the police officer who had access to wiretaps from Coke’s phones, illegally passed the evidence on to the US, instead of to local authorities.
Golding said that the US was not on the list referenced on the court order allowing local law enforcement to tap the accused former area leader’s phone and should not have been allowed to access the information obtained via the bug.
Lewin, in an earlier interview, dubbed the policeman at the centre of the issue ‘Constable Red Herring’ implying that he was just a scapegoat. He also told the Sunday Observer that the prime minister’s claim that wiretap evidence gathered in the Coke case illegally changed hands, was unfounded.
Former Attorney General A J Nicholson, who was Jamaica’s chief legal advisor at the time when the request came from the United States, said the use of the information was permissible under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty which Jamaica signed with its northern neighbour.
Former National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips said this Treaty set the policy.
“This is not a pact, which I believe is the word the prime minister used at the Area Council 1 meeting in August (2010),” Phillips said. “It is a memorandum of understanding which settled on what access people would have. Prior to that, there had been no formal arrangement. People would get access, but there was nothing that would provide a basis for an agreement. But these arrangements existed before me, and so it was just a matter of formalising a tradition which had long existed.”
It was that tradition that led to the bugging of the phones of Jamaican Norris ‘Dedo’ Nembhard, who former US President George W Bush designated a drug kingpin, as well as those of Leebert Ramcharan and Donovan Williams.
Nembhard was extradited to the US in July 2008, while Ramcharan and Williams were handed over to US authorities in 2007. The three are currently serving time in US prisons.
Phillips said as far as he could recall, that anti-drug operation spanned several countries including Jamaica, Colombia, The Bahamas, the United Kingdom and the United States, and wiretapping was not an issue anywhere else.
“No, I don’t recall it being an issue by anyone,” said Phillips. “But I wasn’t directly involved, it would have been the director of public prosecutions on our end. But in all of this, if you look at the cases, I don’t think anybody raised the matter of the use of and even the exchange of wiretapped evidence.
“The law is clear as far as I am advised. The commissioner of police and the chief of defence staff have access to it, and they can use it for law enforcement purposes and that includes co-operating with other states,” added the former security minister.
In late November 2010, the prime minister said legislation would be brought to Parliament to amend current provisions in the Interception of Communication (Wiretapping) law.
He is attempting to close a loophole in the current system to make it mandatory for wiretap information secured in Jamaica to be handed to designated local authorities before it is passed to anyone outside of the country.
