...the Met probebrly thought all these people were trouble makers, so didn't bother. Hell they probebrly got all the details themselves so they could the information inside to brand them terrorists...

Ooo look that person once walked past a CND camp in 1984. Terrorist.

Oh look, that bloke took a photo of a London red bus. Terrorist.

That women didn't wear a Bra in 1996, bloody femminist. Sorry terrorist.

We have two issues here:

A) Journalists taking advantage of the rather silly default password for Voicemails.

B) Journalists paying police to use RIPA (thanks Jacqui...) to request phone records.

The Police won't investiage A because of B.

Welcome to the clusterfuck...

So hacking broadband = good but hacking mobiles = bad?

I wonder if this is just because the NOTW refused to hand over some juicy recordings to the met?

AC because of the state of this country!

How exactly were they hacked, apart from guessing the voicemail PIN ? Is there some backdoor method for accessing peoples mobile phone accounts.

Illegal activity == criminal charges

Seems slightly incongruous that the newspaper group can pay an "out of court settlement" to get away with a criminal act.

I thought the principle was, that the law was an equal asset to all, rather than the decisions of the police and judiciary being dictated by the ability to pay, or political clout.

<sigh>

Seems to me that those useually branded as Criminals have more integrity.

Its not hacking. They where guessing voicemail passwords.

Who uses voicemail these days anyway?

If it's illegal to hack a phone why do the manufacturers sell phones to companies that then lock that phone to their network and insist on having there branding placed onto the device?

Have those companies not therefore hacked the phone?

Causing everyone to pay £10 to someone with an unlocker to re-flash the phones firmware.

Pfft...

Increasingly, the public is realising that the police's idea of what their "duties" are, is seriously at odds with what we are paying them to do.

Would people be willing to pay for and buy a cell phone if they realized that device is nothing more than a glorified tracking device?

GPRS.. or GPS in short, it's built into every 2G and 3G handset, one manufacturer has made it a huge selling point, Samsung Mobile Tracker. It's very scary the way they slowly eroded peoples privacy rights by offering them all picture and video messaging.

I've always hacked my phones and will continue to do so, if it upsets the manufacturer that I can turn off that feature and still be in possession of a tri-band handset that is not locked to any network, then tough beans!

With just GPRS the best you're going to get is triangulation between mobile masts.

GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)

GPS (Global Positioning System)

Most remote tracking devices use GPS to track, and GPRS as a carrier for the information.

Hope this cleared up and confusion. Remove the tinfoil hat.