I HATE to harp on about it here but Rebekah Brooks is not responsible for her actions while editor of The News of World. She was and still is an employee of the Murdoch Empire.

She is not responsible for her actions because she could, legitimately, claim job insanity. Those actions were driven by the intense need to prove she was the best at her job and from the same hard-bitten mould as a very long line of NoW editors.

Forget the Dog Eat Dog media feeding frenzy which will first grow and as usual fade away. Where she will be found wanting is the stupidity of allowing hard-pressed journalists, who is turn worked for her, to use outsiders to gather the information. That will be her Nemesis. Murdoch will order her dismissal because she was caught out.

Tracks have to to covered and trails obliterated.

The principal reason for the inevitable Brooks departure and destruction of the News of the Screws title (for that’s all which is being killed…Murdoch will have another Sunday on the drawing board right now) has nothing to do with criminal activity.

As always when journalists and publishers become the news the story is dead in the water and the shark pack is circling there is no news so the carcass is ripped apart and eventually the pack will eat its own tail.

Very few newspaper columnists, hacks or specialist writers have the skills to hack into communication networks.

These investigation skills are honed elsewhere. In Government centres such as GCHQ (which had just finished recruiting thousands of new telecom spies) military communication centres are no less skilled and police teams have slowly caught up on the techniques needs.

There is a requirement that all police forces now have teams of investigators which watch for illegal activities within their own and other UK police forces. These teams are whiter than white and if wives or relatives have any sort of brush with the Law, detectives are moved to other sections at once. These are the super cops of legend…except they now exist and have vast powers, skills and support in terms of communication surveillance.

Old rules still apply and consents to snoop are supposed to sought and granted….not always the case.

These sort of areas are the training grounds for the “private detectives” which have (allegedly) been employed by newspapers….and make no mistake News International is NOT alone in this.

The snoops employed by technophobic and therefore incompetent journos do not themselves have those skills and they in turn employ others.

Where were those trained and collect the contacts necessary to break open phone company computers?

There are only two possible sources:
the phone companies themselves and
the quasi-government and governmental departments.

The first stones which have to be lifted are those which the Civil Services’ finest largest and most Established backsides remain firmly attached to.

So far UK Premier David Cameron has not realised just how far down the Establishments’ sewers his proposed inquiries may have to sniff. – AGW