Tabloid journalist jailed for intercepting royal voicemails
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted January 29th 2007 1:07AM
posted January 29th 2007 1:07AM
Any Brits reading this will probably already be aware of the occasionally questionable exploits of the "red top" tabloids, but for those that prefer not to take their tea with crumpets, the news that Clive Goodman, a journalist for the UK Sunday tabloid the News of the World, was found guilty and sentenced to four months jail time for intercepting over 600 phone messages left for three senior officials in the royal household will probably come as a mild shock. To British readers, the fact that a tabloid hack was willing to go to such lengths in order to provide such thrilling exclusives as the "news" that Prince William casually asked an ITV reporter to borrow a video editing suite won't be a surprise at all. Perhaps the most depressing fact in this case is the complete incompetence of the assailants: Mr. Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire -- the freelance investigator who was sentenced to six months prison time for his role in this plot, and for independently tapping several other notable figure's phones -- illegally and recklessly accessed voicemails before the rightful owners had retrieved them. If there's any good to come out of this case, it'll be a tightening of the security at the network operators that provided the royal official's mobile phones: apparently Mulcaire somehow managed to obtain the passwords "issued by the mobile phone companies to their own security staff. This allowed him, having obtained the mobile phone numbers of his targets, to call customer services and to obtain the voicemail retrieval numbers." We don't know whether to be flattered by the fact that royal staff slum it with the rest of us by using the same mobile phone networks that us "commoners" do, or to freak out at the lax security exercise by the unnamed network operators.[Via Boing Boing]
Poor famous/important/wealthy people. They are normal people too (in some respects) they borrow things, order pizza and buy stuff. Why dig into their personal lives to that extent. Just make up crap scandals and be done with it
"but for those that prefer not to take their tea with crumpets"
what is it with you fucking Yanks that you always have some sort of dig or other in your stories at the British/English/Europeans?
hardly anyone drinks tea, we don't all talk with either "posh" or 18th century cockney accents, no one wears bowler hats and sits round the breakfast table and we don't all come from London
The relevance comes after...
"what is it with you fucking Yanks that you always have some sort of dig or other in your stories at the British/English/Europeans?"
Ummm, Maff? Conrad Quilty-Harper *IS* British. Google him and skim around for a while. Alternatively, use the context clues in the post above to obtain good evidence for that conclusion. So, basically, you just got your hate on at us "(ahem) Yanks" with no real provocation. Cheers, mate.
Now, as for journalists, this is the same sort of entitled, greedy, obnoxious behavior that has brought some non-tabloid journalists down in the U.S. and is clearly rife in much of our Congress. Throw the book at 'em. Can't wait for the tearful faux apology.
err.. im british and while i dont drink tea i know that tea in the uk is more popular than coffee in the states, that was a needless rant.
I know lots of people who drink tea. It's not as unpopular as you think. So there. Stop bashing engadget. Just because they're American doesn't make them any less good at what they do.
Im with Maff regardless of what their nationality is iim fed up of blogs making stupid jokes aimed at English people which are inaccurate and only make the simple minded Americans who read this think that this is actually what happens in England. Especially when America is typically known as the most ignorant nation in the world.
Man, you Brits have really got your knickers in a bunch, don't you?
I mean, it's not like Euro tech sites would EVER stoop to the level of taking a dig at Americans, right? Right?
Get over it. It's not a big deal.
Poimt me to a site where an English journalist mocks American culture in anyway and I will gladly eat my hat. Obviously the majority of the readers are American but from lame comments like that I get the impression that you believe England some how a lesser country. All im saying is that generalisations and stereotypes about any country are just going to annoy people and publishing them on a blog like this will just encourage it. plz stop >.>
So sick, it actually is. Apparantly Britain's prisons are full, only a few days ago a man found to be guilty of possessing child porn and guilty of paedophilia was not sentenced due to lack of prison space. This man is not dangerous so why has he been sent to Belmarsh, the UK's Top security prison which is for rape offenders etc. We know he did wrong, just because it was the royals does it mean he has to pay a higher sentence??
And annother thing for me to moan about is network security, but i'll keep that one for annother time.
I couldn't care less about the comments involving brit-american rivalry. This is a blog involving a law case, why turn it into an immature name-calling session? I'm sure we all know deep down, both our nations, and the world as a whole, is going down the pot a bit lately!
First of all, what the primary post is forgetting is that 'Clive Goodman' was infact supposedly responsible for a tiny fraction of the phone-tapping. The whole case has been blown right out of proportion and this kind of thing happens in fleet street all the time, it's a common practice and not just amongst tabloid journalists.
The heavy sentence put upon this man was a highly unnessecary and near thoughtless action. The man who supposedly 'aided' Clive Goodman is infact a reknowned phone-tapper with over 100 clients nationwide. And capital to value of roughly £100,000 was transferred to this man's bank account, from the News Of The World's fund. This kind of money would be impossible to hide from senior staff at the newspaper.
In what was thought by many to be an act of friendship and "ultimate responsibility", the editor of the News Of The World resigned minutes after Clive Goodman's sentence was laid down.
Was this as ex-editor 'Andy Coulson' said him "taking upmost responsibilty"? Or was it a way to stop others from turning attention towards him and his, at the very least, suspicious actions?
Theres been much worry in Britain lately about lack of prison space. Almost every prison is full to overflowing. They are turning away highly dangerous criminals, purely because the resources to keep them off the streets are unavailable. It is shameful.
I need not mention the case of the Paedophile which was released from court with a mere 3 month suspended sentence (for those of you who don't know, this is a prison sentence which is not actually carried out in prison. Yes, the British judicial system is very weak, i will agree with anyone who suggests that). This paedophile is walking our streets, free to go where he pleases, free to apply to any job he wishes, perhaps a caretaker in a school, who knows?
Yet a journalist who has commited a very minor crime is sentenced to 4 months in the most high-security prison in the whole of great britain. Is this justice? Or is this the british judicial system trying (and almost certainly bound to fail) to scare other journalists off phone tapping?
This isn't another rediculous conspiricy theory, as really, to be perfectly honest with you, it's not much of a conspiricy. Its just, in my eyes, a major lapse in what is already a weak judicial system.
I would appreciate sensible feedback.