News of the World Phone Hacking Scandal Hits the Sex Writer World

Yesterday it was revealed that two prominent British sex bloggers – famed Belle de Jour and Girl with A One Track Mind – are likely victims of the ongoing British tabloid (Murdoch) hacking scandal, in which staff of their papers engaged in a variety of hacking methods to get personal information to run as exclusives in their papers.

What has been revealed in tweets and comments from the two blogger-authors opens an eye-widening aspect up into the scandal’s gaping maw. I’ve been following this very closely. It’s almost personal: I became a huge Hugh Grant fan when he first did the wiretapping, I follow British media closely, and I want to watch the Murdoch empire burned down into scorched earth during my lifetime. Because I’ve been following this so closely, I’ve noticed something few have pointed out in the horror of discovering the institutionalized phone hacking practices. I’ve noticed that when the wrongdoing is discussed by those who have admitted to it, they have almost always mentioned in the same breath, “pin numbers and passwords.”

You don’t necessarily need to add “and passwords” when you deal in phone hacks. With the revelations now coming from Belle and Girl, a chilling dimension is emerging.

Adrien Chen writes on Gawker in Sex Writer Says Murdoch Hacked Her Computer (clipped),

Brooke Magnanti blogged about her secret life as a call girl, then published a runaway best-seller about it in 2005 under the name Belle de Jour. On the day her book came out, she claims she got an email from a reporter from the Sunday Times:

“So on the day of the book’s release in the UK, I logged on to a public library computer in Clearwater, Florida, and had a look at that old account. There was a new message from someone I didn’t recognise. I opened it.

The message was from a journo at the Sunday Times. It was short: Come on Belle, not even a little hint? There was an attachment. The attachment started downloading automatically (then if I remember correctly, came up with a “failed to download” message).”

She says the journalist somehow knew she was in Florida, even though she never replied. Now, another formerly anonymous sex writer, Zoe Margolis [Ed: Girl With A One Track Mind], is suggesting on Twitter that journalists hacked her computer too.

Trojans and images. That surprises me with its sophistication, but not so much when you think about how News of the World and its sister publications and news outlets work. When you’re hacking phone accounts in a variety of ways, sending a trojan is merely a small issue of technical competence.

Let me explain.

When you get bulk email and you view the images the sender can set the image url to essentially record who accessed it – and put a unique identifier into each email message. So they know when and where you accessed the email from, and that’s why the sender knew she was in Florida. IP location has good uses, and bad uses. A trojan can do a lot of things, especially on a Windows machine: keylogging, for instance.

If you’re following this story, you know that the central point of outrage is that News of The World was responsible for illegally accessing young murder victim Milly Dowler’s voicemail during the investigation, before it was discovered that she had been killed, and they erased messages in their greed to get new information, interfering with the police (who were being paid off by Murdoch’s paper) and giving the parents false hope that the girl may still be alive. The key point in this is when Hugh Grant, the actor, wore a wire to catch one of Murdoch’s minions as he bragged about the illegal spying practices – but no one cares so much about celebrities having their privacy violated as much as the very real atrocity with Dowler and other murder victims they did this to. I’m guessing that no one would have cared much if sex writers/sex bloggers – especially a sex worker – had this happen to them.

I care – and not just because I’m into British culture, or because Zoe is a longtime and dear friend. I care because privacy is central to my mission, and I know that sex is always the weak point in any media chain. It’s where media people get careless, because they falsely believe that no one cares. I can tell you this from the inside (disclosure: currently at CBSi, formerly at Hearst).

I met Zoe in 2005 right after the horrible London bombings. I had the misfortune of landing 30 minutes after the bombs went off, and spent a strange week getting to know London as it was gripped with terror. Perhaps that’s why I have so much affection for the British people; for a people known as cold and rude, I was struck by their humanity, compassion, kindness and tenderness. I spent a great night out at clubs with Zoe, and I did not know her name was Zoe or anything else: she very carefully made sure I never found out her name or where she lived, and I admired her resolve. We had a great night out.

When Zoe was outed by British tabloids, it was heartbreaking. In March 2008, I held a big sexual privacy panel at SXSW Interactive and was thrilled to have Zoe on it. She explained that the Sunday Times (also News International, sibling of News of the World) had somehow discovered where she lived, and much more.

She’d told me, “The ST found out who I was, where I lived, had my ex-directory phone number, and doorstepped me, hiding a photographer in my garden and then using those covert photos to threaten me with. After they published the expose on me, the tabloids descended, sitting on my, my parents’ and my neighbours’ doorsteps for a week – until I gave an exclusive interview to the Guardian.”

She lost her job. Her family was terrorized. But if you read her post right after the outing, where she published the threatening emails from Murdoch’s News International employees, more is revealed. Not only were Murdoch’s papers outing other U.K. sex bloggers and printing their personal information without consent, they were harassing and threatening them – and in Zoe’s case, they had access to things they should not have. From the Times’ writer’s email:

Dear Miss [my name],

We intend to publish a prominent news story in this weekend’s paper, revealing your identity as the author of the book, Girl With a One Track Mind.

We have matched up the dates of films you have worked on – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Batman Begins and Lara Croft Tomb Raider – and it is clear that they correlate to your blog. We have obtained your birth certificate, and details about where you went to school and college.

We propose to publish the fact that you are 33 and live in [my address] -London, and that your mother, [her name], is a [her address] -based [her profession]. The article includes extracts from your book and blog, relevant to your career in the film industry. We also have a picture of you, taken outside your flat.

Unfortunately, the picture is not particularly flattering and might undermine the image that has been built up around your persona as Abby Lee. I think it would be helpful to both sides if you agreed to a photo shoot today so that we can publish a more attractive image.

We are proposing to assign you our senior portrait photographer, Francesco Guidicini, and would arrange everything to your convenience, including a car to pick you up. We would expect you to provide your own clothes and make up. As the story will be on a colour page, we would prefer the outfit to be one of colourful eveningwear.

We did put this proposal to you yesterday, but heard nothing back. Clearly this is now a matter of urgency, and I would appreciate you contacting me as soon as possible. To avoid any doubt we will, of course, publish the story as it is if we do not hear from you.

Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Hellen

Acting News Editor
Sunday Times

So when Steve Coogan said “passwords” I knew that what Murdoch’s papers and staff had done – or are still doing – is a lot more than just phone voicemail intrusions.

And no – I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Fox News has only reported this fourteen times since the scandal broke. This is just the beginning.

Photo by Richard Kadrey/Kaos Beauty Klinik.