26th April 2023
The news about the royals and hacking, well summarised and analysed by Joshua Rozenberg at his Substack, brings us back to the start of a circle.
For the phone hacking story only came about because of the royals.
The story came about because the Fleet Street press of the time – with their well-connected links with the Metropolitan police and the private investigation mini-industry, and unchecked by fearful politicians – sought access to information from the voicemails of the royal household.
Because the royal household became involved, the matter was passed to different police officers at the Metropolitan Police, who then raided and took compelling evidence from private investigators.
And in Scotland Yard that evidence was stored, and it became relevant to civil claims some years later, and then suddenly the scope and extent of tabloid phone hacking became apparent.
But without the royal household connection, the crucial evidence would not ever have been seized and stored, and without that evidence being available for later litigation, the hacking story may never have emerged.
What happened shows the practical importance of the monarchy to our politics, regardless of constitutional theory and conventional wisdom.
It seems only the monarchy has any autonomous power when the police and the media and the politicians collude.
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Such crude phone hacking now seems from another age – technologically, culturally, politically, legally.
After the current crop of cases it may well be that the phone hacking litigation comes to an end.
Prince Harry’s various cases will then perhaps be the other bookend to that provided by the original hacking of the royal household telephones.
But as the parties attend hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, the sophisticated surveillance and data retention by the state and technology companies continues at an unimaginable scale, again unchecked by either politicians or the media.
The phone hacking of a media generation ago seems like a garden shed affair compared with a huge urban conurbation of the exercise of “investigatory powers”.
Any abuses and misuses (or even uses) of the current technology will, in turn, probably never come to light so as to horrify.
Unless, of course, the abuses and misuses (and uses) affect the royal household.
And only then, maybe, will we ever get to hear about it.
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Very true. I grew up in N Ireland, and remember how, occasionally, an army listening device would be uncovered. This was deemed locally newsworthy, and the bugged person or business would be shocked and indignant etc. Culturally, back then, privacy still mattered. Nowadays, in an era where we’re comfortable with Alexa in our bedrooms, it all now seems so quaint – we willingly share (and often pay social media companies to do so) much more information than ever was picked up by a state listening device. I sometimes wonder what is the point of having spies nowadays.
As a dog returns to his vomit…
Makes for some low level fun seeing the very rich screwing over the very rich and making fee income for, err, the very rich. Points up the symbiosis between the royal industry and the ‘news’ industry. The one needs the other and indeed if the royals did not exist we would have to invent them. The ‘news’ industry here being bosoms, bottoms, £xyz houses, how many wrinkles on a fading starlet’s face and shiny new motor cars.
Still, the question of just how a public voicemail system was left wide open and unmonitored for so long is a puzzle never to be resolved.
Those interested in data security will take little comfort from Bruce Schneir’s blog telling us that an Israeli cyberweapons company has ‘gone bust’ as they do, but is likely to rise phoenix-like. Far too useful to be allowed to vanish. And messrs Signal and Whatsapp are getting a bit exercised about the Online Safety Bill. Don’t know what the fuss is about, it is easier to ignore the encryption and go for the end point computers – so they say.
Then for many years ingenious companies have offered for (limited) sale boxes that make it easy(ish) to listen to all mobile phone calls. It would be surprising indeed if a few of these have not made their way into the hands of the newshounds or their helpers. If you have one one, best not to advertise the fact. Tricky business security.
« the symbiosis between the royal industry and the ‘news’ industry »
I am old enough to remember when the Windsors had ‘subjects’. Apparently, they now have ‘fans’.
I wonder how long this particular show can be kept on the road?
Let us hope that the technology that is undoubtedly being being used for industrial scale mass surveillance (hoovered up from ANPR, and credit card use, and tracking mobile phones, and smart speakers, and social media, and online cookies) is more reliable, and the people using it more ethical, than those employed for many years at the Post Office.
If there are abuses, another way they may come to light is through leaks (see for example Chelsea Manning).