The phone-hacking scandal

From Barack Obama to personal photo leaks and Bitcoin scams, celebrity phone hacking scandals grip the front pages of Heat magazine as often as the most prestigious papers, and increasingly so.

But only one saga has notoriety as the phone-hacking scandal. The News of the World, a popular British national “red top” tabloid newspaper, was at the center of it all.

“Cyber security has been [traditionally] focused on BlackRock and JPMorgan — that’s not the world anymore.”, according to Roderick Jones, founder of Concentric Advisors. By 2002, it had become clear that confidential personal information had become a hot commodity the British press was readily running through organized trade routes.

The scandal broke in 2006 when it was revealed the tabloid had hacked both Prince William and Prince Harry’s voicemails. Over a decade on, the saga still manages to retain heavy-weight dominance in the media, having recently been dragged into full circle by the Duke of Sussex, who “fought back tears” while recalling his alleged phone hacking ordeal in the bitter High Court legal battle that is yet to end.

The Leveson Inquiry began in 2011 after much darker details of dodgy dealings at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct tabloid emerged. Targets of employee hacking were not limited to celebrities, politicians, and members of the Royal Family, but also included crime victims. It was a flagrant violation of privacy and a breach of trust.

Steve Coogan’s mirrored national sentiment, “Hacking into a victim of crime’s phone is sort of a poetically elegant manifestation of a modus operandi the tabloids have”. A victim himself, the comedian since received a six-figure sum in damages after the publisher admitted to phone hacking

The report unmasked press ethics, and found News editor Greg Miskiw helped introduce hacking to the paper, after learning how to listen in on voicemails from a PI. All you need is a phone number, and it can be done repeatedly without arousing suspicion. “I would choose my targets very, very carefully… by the time I left the London office, the people put in charge were just hacking everybody.”.

As of 2012, 4,744 individuals’ names and numbers were found in evidence by the Met. Celeb victim Sienna Miller told British Vogue last year the hacking scandal put her through a breakdown. She continued, “There are some things I regret because I wish I’d been more protected. But life was so out of control. It’s a miracle that I actually retained a career and a life.”

The scandal serves as an en-masse cautionary tale about the potential consequences of lax cybersecurity practices. Things have evolved from pin-accessed voicemail, but so have covert cyber-schemes, ironically superseding the control of those under fire for enlisting their unlawful power only a decade ago.

Forensic analysis by the Citizen Lab and others found that Pegasus spyware was used to spy on 35 journalists and members of civil society in El Salvador between June 2020 and November 2021. The Pegasus Project found more than 180 journalists on a list of potential targets that could turn their mobile phones into “listening devices”.
In July 2011, the scandal that brought privacy concerns to the forefront of public consciousness was debated in the House of Commons. Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said: “At last the sun is setting on Rupert Murdoch’s British empire”. But where one empire crumbles, another rises. The biggest bully in the playground will always emerge in tandem with technological developments. This marks a relatively young phenomenon in personal safety, but in cyber-security, it’s what we’ve always been working to combat, so you don’t have to worry.

The Sotera SecurePhone has never been infected by Pegasus spyware. The Integrity 178B operating system has never been hacked or had any vulnerabilities detected in 20+ years of existence, giving families, celebrities, and VIPs confidence in the privacy of their personal conversations. Users of the Sotera SecurePhone connect with clients and colleagues on the same operating system that protects the US nuclear arsenal, military weapons systems, NASA/Department of Defense space systems, and commercial airliners.