Phone tapping
16 August 2006
Download the 8 tips for protecting yourself against phone tapping
A flurry of activity for Londons police forces and an inevitable attendant media melee accompanied the news this month that voicemail messages of members of the British Royal household had supposedly been tapped into. The unwelcome distraction this provided for the Londons anti-terrorist officers was obvious enough, however the subsequent allegations that the investigation centred on alleged attempts by UK tabloid journalists to try and maximise their chances of getting a scoop raised both eyebrows and legal questions.
No state of the art technology was employed, according to press reports, rather a simple exploitation of standard security settings - standard being the operative word. According to the medias informative box-outs on the technicalities, it appears that anyone wishing to listen to another persons mobile phone messages need only use a modicum of common sense to try and work out the factory set pin for that particular phone, which few people ever bother to adjust. Many are no more sophisticated than a 1234 configuration. Cracking one is about as complicated as solving a monotone Rubiks cube.
The royal editor of the News of the World, a prominent tabloid in the UK, and two other men believed to be investigators were arrested. At least one of them has been charged with eight counts of illegal interception. If he is convicted he potentially faces a sentence of up to two years in prison.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) creates a criminal offence of intentionally intercepting a communication in the course of its transmission on a public telecommunications system without lawful authority. The act serves the dual purpose of lowering the bar in terms of the approval required by authorities to employ wire tapping methods in the name of national security while at the same time defining existing offences.
In the highly competitive world of tabloid journalism the end, we are often told, justifies the means. Fortune favours the brave and all that. To some extent this has been recognised by the civil law in terms of public interest defences such as the Reynolds v Times Newspapers decision. Making use of the public interest defence will still require any journalist to show that he or she did not act with disregard to the concept of responsible journalism.
Notwithstanding the innocence or otherwise of the News of the Worlds royal editor, many are eager to know whether other journalists have managed to successfully employ such tactics? In the wake of this discovery the papers are not so much ready to lash back against the very suggestion of dubious conduct as regaling us with proud reports that, apparently, some journalists have quite happily been doing this for years. Perhaps even more surprisingly, they claim to have been tapping into (or screwing as it has come to be known) not only phones of celebrity scoop magnets but also into one anothers phone lines too.
Yet a more sombre question rears its head for our hack friends, and one which may trouble any journalist currently fretting over an ill-conceived late night check of a contact's voicemail. Assuming a victim of tapping were to become aware of an impending story and its source, as is usually the case with higher-profile stories, what good would the information actually be?
The Human Rights Act came into force in October 2000 and it was never intended to be taken lightly. The Article 8 right to respect for private and family life has been constantly at odds with the right to freedom of expression and has been advanced by such ECHR cases as Von Hannover. Whilst there may be glory in a successful session of dirt dishing, it is clear that breaching privacy laws does nothing to heighten a journalist's credibility in the eyes of the law.
There is clear authority that information which is not in the public interest and which has a quality of confidence should not be in the public domain, and it's hard to imagine many circumstances aside from an individual's medical records that convey the quality of confidence more effectively than a private voicemail message. The cases of Mr and Mrs Douglas, Naomi Campbell, Sara Cox and plenty of others besides have gone to show that the all glorious scoop does not come without a penalty, and that is if the newspaper gets as far as to publish. Any scoop of real substance obtained in such circumstances could have the lawyers in court for an injunction in an instant.
8 tips for protecting yourself against phone tapping
- Change the factory settings on your voicemail to prevent illegal accessing.
One of the ways people can get access to the voicemail messages on your mobile
phone is by using the factory default setting for your pin code. All mobile phones
start with factory (or 'standard') settings. To change the standard pin code for your
own unique code, simply ring your voicemail and select the option to change your
security pin number on the main menu. To be really safe switch off your voicemail.
- Turn off your Bluetooth connection. If you don't, information could be bluesnarfed
accessed by someone in the vicinity via your open Bluetooth connection.
- Limit your roaming function. Is your phone set up to receive/make calls
overseas? If it is then limit this as much as possible. Having roaming on can
make it harder for some cellular carriers to use fraud-detection programmes and
shut down a stolen/hacked phone.
- Don't send sensitive messages such as texts or pictures to anyone else's
phone. You might be smart enough to secure your phone, but is the person
you've just sent that personal text as clued up as you?
- Delete your messages. Sending personal messages will be unavoidable
sometimes of course. Once read or listened to we suggest that anything you
wouldn't want the media or public to see or hear is deleted straightaway.
- Contact your service provider. They can tell you if someone (usually pretending
to be you) has asked for an itemised bill or tried to re-direct your bills. Checking
your itemised bill could also show if someone has tried to clone your phone.
- Keep your phone with you. It might sound obvious, but the simplest way to read
your texts, listen to your messages or see your pictures is via your phone itself.
Don't lend your phone to anyone.
- Register your phone in the name of your partner or in the name of your
business to avoid drawing attention to your records.