Rubbish
Are they really trying to tell me, that from 2002 until 2011 the message deletion was not believed to be automatic? I mean, that's only 9 years to figure it out.
NotW didn't delete Milly Dowler 'false hope' voicemail
New evidence has emerged that shows that the News of the World was not responsible for deleting voicemail messages on murder victim Milly Dowler's phone, a move that gave her family false hope that the schoolgirl might still be alive. Scotland Yard officers working on Operation Weeting discovered phone logs that showed that …
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Monday 12th December 2011 14:11 GMT Bif
Oh yes they did.
The NOTW hacks (or their proxies) accessed the voicemails. This caused them to be automatically deleted. Had the messages not been accessed, they wouldn't have been deleted and the Dowler family would not have noticed that the previously-full voicemail spool was accepting new messages.
Trying to get a job on a Murdoch rag are we?
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Monday 12th December 2011 16:34 GMT Jedit
"Trying to get a job on a Murdoch rag are we?"
I doubt it, but your demonstration of a complete and utter inability to read or understand basic facts suggests that you are.
The article clearly states that some of the messages were deleted in this fashion before the NotW accessed the phone. The NI hacks obfuscated the time of Milly's last real access by reading the messages, and are thus guilty as charged of interfering with a police investigation. However, the allegations that they had *deliberately* deleted messages to make room for more "newsworthy items" are false.
The NI hacks also cannot be held responsible for any false hope given to the Dowlers in the first three days after Milly's disappearance, as those messages would have been deleted even had they done nothing. As those three days are the crucial period in which changing gears from a low-priority runaway case to a hunt for a murderer would have had the greatest effect, the effect of their actions to hinder the investigation is reduced.
They're still scum, of course, but not quite as scummy as they are being painted.
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Monday 12th December 2011 14:11 GMT dave 81
Good Riddance
I am past caring what the NoTW did or did not do. I am just glad that that bunch of tards are no longer around to make someone do something then report it as if it was news. Real undercover work is reporting on what happens with out some pushy left wing anti royal [see you next Tuesday] steering the events so a crap paper could sell a few sheets.
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Monday 12th December 2011 16:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
How... awful.
The damage's done on all sides and then it turns out it wasn't what everyone thought it was.
This isn't going to turn back the clock, give people their reputations back, much less bring the poor girl back to life. None of that changes that the NoTW had no business listening to the voicemails, it merely indicates that the reactions might've been a little over the top --and in and of themselves too that much extra strain on the family, say-- and anyway misdirected.
Point in case: Someone, say the police with warrant in hand, should've poked the voicemail operator and made them 1) make the storage unlimited for that account during the investigation, 2) archive the whole thing, 3) provide timely access logs on both who was leaving messages and who was listening to them, as both were relevant to the investigation.
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Monday 12th December 2011 16:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
>"automatically delete voicemails 72 hours after being listened to."
So if the NoTW reporter hadn't listened to them, they wouldn't have been deleted. Guilty.
OK, it wasn't that they were intentionally deleting them, but their actions inevitably caused those messages to be deleted. Anyone who has had a phone (and hence a voicemail account of their own) should have known this just by RTFMing. These guys knew the system well enough to hack past a default password, they have no justification for saying they didn't know how the most basic features of it operate.
We don't excuse bombers when they say "I didn't blow anything up, it was that naughty gunpowder, not me, all I did was light a fuse and the rest 'just happened'." NotW, being in posession of detailed expert knowledge on how the voicemail system operates, could and should have known what would result from their actions and are just as responsible for their consequences as if they had intentionally chosen that outcome.
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 10:50 GMT Intractable Potsherd
@Rob O'Connor
That was my thought, too. It is well known that the parents were listening to the messages (otherwise how would the mother have known that messages were being deleted?).
Still a bit of a fail for the police: a) why did they let the parents keep the phone (it was a means of gathering evidence/intelligence relevant to the missing girl); b) if they had reason for (a), why did they not think to protect the messages? - even in 2002, some members of the police force (sorry, "service") had dragged themselves sufficiently out of whatever slime it is that produces coppers to have mobiles of their own.
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Monday 12th December 2011 20:02 GMT JimmyPage
Doesn't really matter
The nub of the matter, irrespective of NoTWs deliberate deleting of voicemails, or unintentional (by accessing them, and tripping the 3 day auto-deletion) is the NoTW were *surreptitiously* accessing the account. This meant valuable police time and expertise was engaged in following up apparent phone activity, which might have been better deployed searching for known sex offenders in the area. Who knows, they may have been able to knock on Bellfields door a *second* time, and caught him then.
The sheer arrogance and brass balls of the NoTW cannot be overstated. Who the fuck did they think they were that they could patently (and ILLEGALLY) interfere in a life-or-death police investigation. And here's more thought-fodder ... you don't get an attitude like that overnight. You get it because you have done similar in the past, and got away with it. So how many serious criminal investigations did the NoTW similarly queer ? The only way to find out would be to ask them.
What's that you say ? They've closed down ? I bet the shredders worked overtime in the last 48 hours. I wonder if it was like the film "Downfall" ?
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 10:50 GMT Intractable Potsherd
"So how many serious criminal investigations did the NoTW similarly queer ?"
I had a similar thought last night, when I heard Mazher Mahmood had said that the NotW was a force for good because of the very large number of convictions brought after investigations. There surely now has to be grounds for appeal in every single one of them, since the evidence is now clearly suspect.
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Monday 12th December 2011 21:14 GMT 100113.1537
So...
who did access the voicemails then?
Isn't that the issue here?
No-one seems to be mourning the NoTW, but pretty much all of the papers were doing the same thing and it looks like it was someone else who accessed these particular messages, causing them to be deleted. If it turns out to have been the Guardian (who's reporters have been making hay with NI's troubles), will that be closed down by it owners?
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 10:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Who accessed the voicemails?
> Detectives .. have since uncovered evidence that showed the girl's phone would automatically delete voicemails 72 hours after being listened to. Some of those messages were deleted prior to anyone working for the NotW gaining access to Milly's voicemails, Scotland Yard reportedly said ...
Regardless, NotW did access the voicemail and any voicemails so accessed would be deleted after 72 hours, assuming this to be true. Also, they would have a record of the phone numbers used to access the voicemails, wouldn't they? Just how difficult is it for security services to trace a phone call.
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Tuesday 13th December 2011 10:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
re: The Sun hires Liars
> This would be the same police force claiming this that are also being investigated by the Leveson Inquiry for being in the Murdoch Media's pockets having accepted bribes from them, would it?
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That's why the 'investigation` is proceeding ever so slowly. I mean just how difficult is it to trace the phones that were used to access the emails?
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
