Common sense suggests that the hacking of voicemail is neither an efficient nor an effective way of gaining information of journalistic interest, as most messages tend to contain little more than low-grade chatter of the: "Hi, it's me – call me back" ilk.
It is surprising that the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics seems to be taking allegations of voicemail hacking at face value, without first probing whether journalists may have taken the art of mobile phone hacking to an altogether more sinister level ("Payments to police symbolise corruption on a bigger scale", The Herald, February 29).
Mobile phone hacking can go way beyond unauthorised access of voicemail – it has the potential to turn a person's mobile into an all-in-one bug and location finder capable of monitoring their every movement, their every spoken word and every number they dial or receive.
It is easy to see how this (more extensive) form of hacking could have been attractive to unscrupulous journalists and paparazzi, keen to chase their victims around town and extract every juicy detail of their private lives. And it is easy to see how the murky technical expertise that allowed journalists to hack into voicemail could also have furnished them with the capability to track and live monitor the conversations of unsuspecting victims via their mobile phones.
The Leveson Inquiry should be taking a much closer look at the extent to which this type of top-end surveillance technique, which rightfully belongs solely in the hands of the security services, may have found its way into the hands of unscrupulous journalists.
The nagging concern is that the true extent of phone hacking and journalistic misdemeanours may have been deliberately played down by the police, in order to protect national intelligence-gathering techniques, and that the net result is that the Leveson Inquiry and the British public will have the wool pulled over their eyes.
Dr Mark Campbell-Roddis,
1 Pont Crescent,
Dunblane.
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