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The News of the World phone hacking scandal has hit the book industry, with the revelation that private material relating to individuals within the trade has been discovered by police during "Operation Weeting".

Both agent Peter Cox and publisher John Blake have confirmed that their personal details have been turned up by the Metropolitan Police as part of its investigations into illegal surveillance operations by the now defunct Sunday paper.

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You know this is what you'll really do:


I did this, this afternoon before the news broke about The News of the World ceasing publication... seems sort of more appropriate now.

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By Simon Chesterman

The ongoing police investigation into phone-hacking in Britain by the tabloid News of the World has revealed the widespread use of surveillance techniques by private actors, with predictable outrage expressed at the violations of privacy. Yet the recent inquiries only began in earnest after a major story in the New York Times.

This is the paradox of today’s media: investigative journalism is often key to revealing abuses of surveillance powers, yet the commercial reality of today’s market drives unscrupulous journalists themselves towards ever more dubious methods.

That market has been radically altered by the “new media”, with WikiLeaks as its poster-child — ably exploiting the Internet’s capacity for widespread dissemination of data, but at the expense of credible efforts at analysis or minimizing the potential harm to named individuals. It is “journalism” by quantity rather than quality.

These two trends — muck-raking and unfiltered dissemination — become all the more serious when linked to the extraordinary tools of surveillance available to government and, increasingly, private actors.

The spread of surveillance powers through Britain has long puzzled outside observers. On the one hand, Britain is a rare example of a country that developed a comprehensive identity card regime during the Second World War and then dismantled it after the conclusion of hostilities — apparently to the dismay of many in law enforcement circles. Later in the century, however, the absence of constitutional protections of rights, a general belief in the benevolence of government, and episodes like the 1993 James Bulger murder encouraged the growth of a sophisticated surveillance state.

Britain now enjoys the highest concentration of CCTV cameras in the world, manages the London Congestion Charge by recording details of every car entering and leaving the capital, and stores DNA samples from an ever growing proportion of the population.

In the 2010 general election, Britain’s Conservative Party campaigned on a platform of scrapping plans for an identity card that would have been linked to a National Identity Register. Interestingly, the arguments that resonated with the public had less to do with privacy concerns than the expense involved, doubts about government competence to manage the data, and a general wariness that the whole enterprise looked a little too “European”.

Does this mean that Britons do not care about privacy? Certainly not. But as in many other countries it is hard to reconcile the apparent sincerity of individuals claiming to be concerned about their privacy with the nonchalant behaviour of those same individuals in revealing personal information voluntarily or engaging in activities where there is manifestly no reasonable expectation to privacy.

This is not limited to teenagers. The current head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, was embarrassed by photos that his wife posted on Facebook in 2009 revealing the location of their London flat and the whereabouts of their three adult children. Last October his daughter uploaded a suggestive photograph of herself holding a golden Kalashnikov — quickly cut and pasted from Facebook to the Mirror.

There is, however, a generational element to attit

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By Simon McKay

In 1928 the iconic United States Supreme Court Justices Holmes and Brandeis dissented in a judgment that ruled the product of telephone conversations derived from “wiretapping” admissible. With characteristic eloquence, Mr Justice Brandeis held that “the confined criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw”. The judges could be forgiven for thinking that, at least in terms of the English law, eighty years on, things haven’t changed much.

There is a connection between the phone hacking row, which appears to be the preserve of celebrities who fear their calls may have been listened into and the changes to control orders, inelegantly re-named Terrorism Prevention and Investigatory Measures. On the one hand, there is a gaggle of media lawyers and their clients complaining that the Metropolitan Police has failed to take action against individuals eavesdropping on the most private of conversations and on the other the same material is secretly relied upon by the State to confine individuals, who have not been convicted of any offence, to effective house arrest and to impose other Orwellian sanctions. The apparent juxtaposition becomes manifest; the police and agencies rely on the material to counter terrorism, yet appear impotent in terms of investigating allegations of what is given the seemingly neutral term of phone hacking.

There needs to be some attempt to de-mystify what is meant by phone hacking, sometimes referred to as phone tapping. It is clear that practically what is meant is eavesdropping on voicemail messages.

Previously the police have asserted they could not rely on the evidence provided on the ground that it is not admissible. This is a reference to a legal provision in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 that prohibits the use of intercept product in court proceedings. However, it has been misunderstood. The prohibition largely relates to product of intercept warrants that the State obtains to protect national security and investigate other threats as well as serious crime – this is why terror suspects aren’t prosecuted in the criminal courts – the intelligence implicating them cannot be used for this purpose. It expressly does not apply where an illegal interception has occurred.

But is a third party listening to a voicemail an interception? The simple answer is that it might be, particularly if it has not been listened to (if it is, it is a criminal offence) but if it is not, it is almost certainly an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Where such offences may have been committed there is no question that the incident and evidence of interception or hacking is admissible and capable of being used by the police. Even if there was an argument to the contrary, the consent of the “victim” alleviates any remaining difficulty concerning the issue (if an individual consents to their calls being intercepted the prohibition on admissibility no longer applies).

To fair to the police, the highest courts in the land have found the question of what may amount to an interception “particularly puzzling” and the legislation “difficult to understand”. It is almost impenetrable but that is not really any excuse.

Add to this the fact that the law in this area is under review (again). A cynic could muse what all the fuss is about; surely the simplest thing would be to make the product of intercept admissible, even i