Phone Hacking: What Did Piers Morgan Know/Do?

Nice little morsel commenting on a paragraph from Piers Morgan's book, based on his diaries:

Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I’ll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.

Then on Monday, July 18, 2001, he goes on his own show on CNN and defends our dear Rupert:

I just cannot accept — although there is this huge witch hunt going on to bring him down personally — I don’t accept that he himself would be party to illegal activity."

Well, well, well.

He was editor of the Daily Mirror, and may have picked up the scoop of the year in 2002, based on phone hacking.

That last is not confirmed officially, but with Rebekah Brooks' computer somehow lost in the trash and other developments, it's sounding like the botched cover-up is failing badly.

I'm betting there will be another round of auditions for the new Larry King, as if that story didn't bore everyone enough the first time around.

Murdock Paper Tried to Listen to 9/11 Victims' Phone Recordings

Or maybe The News of the World did pull it off by other means. It did just as bad in the home country. One article in the UK Mirror tabloid, not terribly well confirmed, yet.

From the story:

A source said: “This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’ private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their ­relatives.

“His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the ­relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look.

There's a lot of talk about the Murdock empire crumbling, but it's this and the other instances of deep creepiness that are setting people's teeth on edge.

Murdock has spilled a lot of ink and unleashed a storm of photons lecturing me on what's right and moral (anything ultraconservative), what not to do (there's a long list), and what I'm supposed to believe to be patriotic. (Ahem, Congressional citizenship, anyone?)

It may be tempting to enjoy watching him fall on his face, but the gritty, dirty, low reality of this scandal should be taken on its own merits. It's all seedy and disgusting.