Mobile phone technology is advancing all the time, and the paparazzi’s fierce appetite for news means more scandals than ever are breaking out. Some involve well-known celebrities, others high-profile political figures, some even involve mobile phone operators. These are some of the most recent and controversial scandals.
Rupert Murdoch’s News of The World (NoW) has been thrown into chaos over alleged wiretapping on the phones of certain well-known individuals. The lengthy investigation that began in 2006 has resurfaced several times since. The next chapter of the affair began when Prince William injured his knee, which was immediately published in the newspaper. This alerted Prince William and a police investigation was launched. Four months later, the actual editor and a private investigator were sent to prison. As the scandal escalated, more celebrities took legal action against the newspaper, notably Max Clifford, who settled out of court for £1 million.
Recently, a new investigation into News of the World’s mobile phone hacking practices was launched as new evidence was found. It followed an internal NoW investigation that led to the firing of its assistant editor Ian Edmondson. The reason for this was that the newspaper allegedly discovered four emails showing that it had knowledge of the phone hacking. Details were passed to the police.
Spy movies often portray governments spying on criminals and terrorists, but the reverse is rarely the case. Apparently, the mobile phone of the Greek Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis, was tapped along with 100 other people. Illegal software was installed on Vodafone Greece’s network so that calls could be forwarded to another number for recording. The plot thickened later when it became known that Kostas Tsalikidis, head of Vodafone’s network design department in Greece, had committed suicide. Tsalikidis’s body was found just two days after Vodafone Greece identified and removed the spyware.
T-Mobile is another mobile carrier that unfortunately got caught up in a telecom controversy. They announced that thousands of their customers’ personal data was sold for a substantial sum without their knowledge. In their defense they alerted the data protection watchdog to investigate. It was later determined that the data was sold to competitors who wanted to know when the contracts were up so they could break in and steal customers. Several T-Mobile employees were later prosecuted for selling data to brokers so they could communicate with customers whose contracts were up for renewal.
A Doncaster council worker in the UK managed to rack up a nearly £3,000 mobile phone bill from betting text messages, which the UK taxpayer had to pay. The employee of the business standards department has already left the position. But according to the council, they are trying to get the money back and are currently looking into a second bill of almost £2000. The phone had apparently received 1,800 premium rate text messages priced at £1.27 each.
As technology advances, hacking into these personal communication devices is likely to become easier and more widespread. Currently, in the UK, the offense carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison. Many politicians are calling for stricter regulations and harsher sentences. Whether or not this happens, only time will tell, but it is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed.
