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You are here: Home / Politics / An Unexamined Scandal / Murdoch’s Media, National Security & “The Innocent Have Nothing to Hide”

Murdoch’s Media, National Security & “The Innocent Have Nothing to Hide”

by Anne Laurie|  August 1, 20111:30 am| 20 Comments

This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, C.R.E.A.M., Security Theatre

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Drafted this last night, and eventually decided it was a little too inside-baseball, especially since so many people would prefer to devote their free time to freaking out about the Neverending Debt-Ceiling Debacle. But after Cole’s ISP post Sunday afternoon…

That subsector of Rupertdammerung known as “Hackgate” may have found its Frank Wills. According to John Ward at The Slog, travelling salesman Steve Nott “… went to the police, the newspapers and other key institutions in 1999. He devoted a year thereafter to warning anyone who’d listen about how easy it was to hack a mobile phone.“:

In late 1998, salesman Steve Nott lost his mobile phone network coverage, and rang Vodafone from a service station – to ask how he could access his message. Vodafone told him exactly how – without making any checks – and helpfully added that Steve could use this to get into anyone’s mobile at any time. Says Nott:
__
“I was gobsmacked that it was so easy to be able to do this, and spent the next couple of months having fun and games with my mates phones, work colleagues phones and so on. I realised that this issue of easily being able to intercept voicemail, change welcome greetings, delete messages and change the voicemail PIN was too serious to play about with and decided to make some noise about the risks to National Security I’d stumbled across.” […]

Ward adds his own gloss:

I have blogged for years on the subject of how most ISPs and phonecos are allowed to behave like pirates and avoid legal regulation with any teeth because the police and security services need them. The one big nuisance for our interior security Ministries about Hackgate is that it has made public something they’ve probably been doing with impunity for twenty years or more, going back to the dawn of mobiles.
__
It seems very odd indeed that for most of those years, the biggest mobile operator in the UK, Vodafone, produced no details about personal security protection in their manuals….and then blatantly tried to downplay the danger on national BBC Radio. Were they asked to leave out these details by more shadowy characters? Was the unwillingness of either tabloid or ITN to run the story as much a case of being warned off by the security services?
__
Nobody should regard those questions as wild, paranoid conspiracy theory. All the ISPs now have GCHQ monitoring software installed that covers every email written in, and received by, Britain. We know from our unhappy time under the Home Secretaryship of Jacqui Smith that she blithely gave these and more powers to GCHQ – whose demands to monitor the ‘danger’ posed by a tiny minority of militants has given them carte blanche to watch, listen to and transcribe every human contact we have with one another in the UK. We also know that Ms Smith lied to Parliament about having cancelled a ‘test’ programme of monitoring that would’ve cost a staggering £13 billion. The test went on secretly to become the real thing – and the £13 billion was duly spent.

Since he is not resident in The Greatest Country in the World, Mr. Ward’s countertops are presumably safe from inspection. But perhaps it says something about the infectiousness of Murdoch’s tabloid style that we’re already talking about a dead Hoare and a loose Nott…

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Reader Interactions

20Comments

  1. 1.

    Maude

    August 1, 2011 at 1:58 am

    OT, sorry, what time did they reach a deal on the debt ceiling? Just woke up to take a pain med and thought I’d go online to see if a deal was reached.

  2. 2.

    Mnemosyne

    August 1, 2011 at 2:03 am

    @Maude:

    As far as I can tell, this is yet another deal that’s going to get rejected by the House because Obama supports it. Boehner has apparently agreed to it but there hasn’t been a vote on it in either house of Congress.

    Given Boehner’s inability to control his caucus, my strong suspicion is that this is another chimera.

  3. 3.

    PeakVT

    August 1, 2011 at 2:10 am

    @Maude: Around 5. Details here.

    The one big nuisance for our interior security Ministries about Hackgate is that it has made public something they’ve probably been doing with impunity for twenty years or more, going back to the dawn of mobiles.

    The US government is bad, but it hasn’t achieved the level of intrusion that the UK government has. Yet.

  4. 4.

    Maude

    August 1, 2011 at 2:18 am

    Thank you both. I also have to tell the landlord that I can’t pay rent until the SSDI check comes in. What fun. I am also re applying for Medicaid as I am dual eligible and it pays the co pay. I have to switch to HMO and I don’t have the paperwork yet.
    This stuff is scary to me. I am trying to get off all support and it will take time. I don’t know about others on SSDI, but it is getting a lot harder to squeak by.

  5. 5.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    August 1, 2011 at 2:26 am

    hunch cat

  6. 6.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    August 1, 2011 at 2:26 am

    hunch cat

  7. 7.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    August 1, 2011 at 2:26 am

    hunch cat

  8. 8.

    eemom

    August 1, 2011 at 2:39 am

    so many people would prefer to devote their free time to freaking out about the Neverending Debt-Ceiling Debacle.

    oh, sorry about that AL. So very sorry that some of us don’t have the luxury of NOT spending our free time freaking out about the Neverending D-CD, what with parents who depend on SS checks and whatnot.

    I am appalled at the disrespect of my fellow commenters, going on about this Neverending D-CD on THIS thread when they’re supposed to be talking about phone hacking — almost as though the D-CD was something so important that it kind of occupies everybody’s attention at the moment to the exclusion of everything else……you know, like it actually AFFECTED people’s lives more than phone hacking does. Forgive us, for we know not what we do.

  9. 9.

    Yutsano

    August 1, 2011 at 2:45 am

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: A Triple Lindy. I haven’t seen one of those in awhile.

  10. 10.

    TheMightyTrowel

    August 1, 2011 at 3:15 am

    OT – WSJ guy is on my BBC morning news again explaining the debt stupidity. He’s cautiously optimistic that a deal will pass, but he’s hedging. He sounds like he’s going to cry every time he says something is the Republicans’ fault.

  11. 11.

    No one of Importance

    August 1, 2011 at 3:28 am

    @eemom: “Forgive us, for we know not what we do.”

    Sarcasm’s a waste of time with AL, you should know that by now. Her role is to school all the other posters and commenters by setting an example and no one, by god, is going to stop her doing that.

    Not only is your country’s artificially created debt limit crisis of immediate personal importance to many of your people, it’s also of immediate personal importance to many people outside the USA. It’s affecting markets here in Australia, and things like the exchange rate too, which also has a detrimental impact on us and you.

    It’s very clear to those of us outside the USA who’s responsible for this mess, and who’s preventing a tidy, easy and necessary solution (hint, it ain’t the handsome black guy in the White House). I wish it was so clear to your fellow citizens.

  12. 12.

    Amir_Khalid

    August 1, 2011 at 3:40 am

    That’s a problem of the information age in general — we are all too often encouraged to trust with our personal data agencies and corporations with the means, the motive, and plenty of opportunities to abuse that trust. Our privacy gets invaded, in secrecy, for intrusive surveillance in the name of national security, for financial exploitation to bring yet more profit to the already rich.

    The surveillance state is as old as the state itself. Knowledge of enemies and potential threats is power over them. The secret police gotta do their thing. They count on the ordinary citizen not knowing enough or caring enough or having enough capability to stop them. Who has nothing to hide, goes the old promise, has nothing to fear. So that side of this seamy game is no surprise.

    But it’s also the CEOs of Facebook and Google who urge us to give up more and more of our personal space as a cost of living in the information age. Who are they to demand our privacy and peace of mind to line their pockets with? why would they be surreptitious about intruding on our privacy, if they weren’t up to no good? What makes them different from the surveillance state, especially when they collude with it?

    Why do too many of us foolishly listen to them on this? Why do some of us go so far as to trash our own privacy and dignity just to seek attention?

    Rant over.

  13. 13.

    Viva BrisVegas

    August 1, 2011 at 4:39 am

    Does anybody still regard anything private that is accessible remotely? Whether it be your cell phone, your internet browsing records, your credit history, or your medical records, they are all available to those who have the motivation and the means.

    If you want to keep secrets from your next door neighbour, then chances are you can. If you want to keep secrets from your government, good luck with that. Your best bet in that regard is to not be of any interest.

    So long story short, if you have something to hide, don’t hide it on a device that can be accessed from half a world away.

    By the way, in the Murdoch scandals the most common way to hack into someone’s phone was simply to try the default settings. If they hadn’t been changed then Bob’s your uncle. It wasn’t rocket science.

  14. 14.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    August 1, 2011 at 6:38 am

    @Yutsano:

    it takes practice, a multiple browser screw up, and a pony.

  15. 15.

    Scott

    August 1, 2011 at 7:04 am

    Since he is not resident in The Greatest Country in the World, Mr. Ward’s countertops are presumably safe from inspection.

    No, but someone will hack his phone, then threaten to calls to random people sound ominous. Or say he’s “an admitted phone hacker,” and how can we trust that sort of criminal?!

  16. 16.

    Emma

    August 1, 2011 at 7:47 am

    This sort of thing scares me (sometimes) a great deal more than the debt. We’re slowly, like frogs being lowered into boiling water, getting acclimated to a ghastly future of perpetual surveillance by the powers that be.

    And as far as SSDI, my understanding was that this month is covered but I am not sure. My parents, my uncle, and a couple of widowed aunts are freaking out too.

  17. 17.

    Steven Nott

    August 1, 2011 at 8:27 am

    If you waant to read my full story how I battled everyone to try and warnthe public then please visit my very recently set up website http://www.hackergate.co.uk Thankyou. Steven Nott

  18. 18.

    burnspbesq

    August 1, 2011 at 9:45 am

    It’s one thing to say that our primary tool for dealing with internal and external terrorist threats should be the existing law enforcement/criminal justice system. It’s quite another to say that law enforcement techniques should not evolve as the bad guys’ use of technology evolves.

    There is an important conversation to be had about safeguards and accountability. Alarmism and absolutism don’t necessarily advance that conversation. It’s also worth noting that the US and British legal frameworks are very different: they don’t have a Fourth Amendment.

  19. 19.

    PeakVT

    August 1, 2011 at 10:05 am

    @Steven Nott: Thanks, Steven.

  20. 20.

    scav

    August 1, 2011 at 10:28 am

    Do some people actually get upset that every single person in the freaking entire world isn’t ranting about their specific meltdown du jour? Get over yourselves: the world can multi-task in the things not going so well category. Oddly enough, there are individuals actually impacted by this stuff too, over and above those having studied it or worked on it for years. There are also others who for some odd reason can’t or don’t care to maintain continuous high-pitched screams for days on end but like to occupy their brains with multiple ideas once ina while. In short, piss off. /rant

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