-I'm not sure what you want to know - essentially it was discovered that by phoning a person's phone number and then a simple default code that voice mail messages left on the phone could be listened to. However when a number of celebrities found that stories were sneaking into the media about them and mostly into one newspaper - the News of the World that only they and one or two other people knew about they went to the police. Two people were arrested, charged and convicted and then jailed of phone hacking. The story largely died down, those who had been hacked were slowly being told by the police, they sued and the News of the World settled out of court. In some cases serious amounts of money were paid, including legal fees. At the time the then editor of the News of the world - Andy Coulson resigned but was swiftly hired by David Cameron, then leader of the Conservative party, to do his PR. He claimed that he knew nothing about the phone hacking but resigned on principle.
Then things took a twist, a couple of weeks ago it emerged that one of the people who's phone was hacked was Milly Dowler, a young, teenaged girl. She had gone missing and for a while no one knew if she had run away from home or had an accident, or was abducted. Glenn Mulcaire, who was doing the phone hacking, deleted a couple of messages that he parents left on her phone, leaving them to hope that she was still alive. It turns out that she had been abducted and had been murdered. Other allegations followed - the families of the two girls abducted and murdered at Soham, the families and victims of the London tube/bus bombings and possibly even US victims of September 11. Rupert Murdoch, his son James and other senior executives claim that they had no knowledge of any of this.
Meanwhile it became obvious that the police had failed to investigate this properly, they had 11,000 pages of transcripts of phone hacking evidence but it seems that there were close links to the police and News International, the owners of the News of the World.
Shadowing all of this was an attempt by Rupert Murdoch to buy Sky TV, the UK's only satellite television broadcaster which would have given him a very powerful presence in UK media ownership. Besides the News of the World he owns the Sun, the Times and Sunday Times. Old Rupe likes to enjoy a considerable amount of political influence and both he and his senior executives have cultivated strong links with our politicians - both Labour and Conservative. Clearly this is unhealthy and has led to accusations that he has a considerable amout of political cout in the UK. The Conservative government for example flagged through his takeover of Sky recently, although Murdoch had to withdraw that bid.
There are further accusations that News International journalists bribed police officers - an offence itself and there appears to have been a culture at the organisation where they considered themselves to be above the law.
Where it goes from here is difficult to guess - the News of the World has ceased publication, the Sky bid is off a number of people have resigned from News International and the police have made and are continuing to make a number of arrests. Few people have come out of this with any credit - the Guardian newspaper which tenaciously plugged away, a couple of labour backbench MPs, but it has exposed the way that politics is often conducted - behind closed doors where deals are struck. Cameron no longer employs Coulson, he resigned from that job and is under pressure to explain his many other links with News International. I think he'll survive, but he looks to have been acting under their influence and not as you would expect as someone who is now prime-minister with any degree of independence.
When it settles down i think we'll see quite a few people jailed and that's in addition to the reputations of several politicians and policemen being wrecked.watch movie enemy of the state to have a good idea
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