Murdoch Faces Allegations of Sabotage

Presto Vivace writes "Neil Chenoweth, of the Australian Financial Review, reports that the BBC program Panorama is making new allegations against News Corp of serious misconduct. This time it involves the NDS division of News Corp, which makes conditional access cards for pay TV. It seems that NDS also ran a sabotage operation, hiring pirates to crack the cards of rival companies and posting the code on The House of Ill Compute (thoic.com), a web site hosted by NDS. 'ITV Digital collapsed in March 2002 with losses of more than £1 billion, overwhelmed by mass piracy, as well as technical restrictions and expensive sports contracts. Its collapse left Murdoch-controlled BSkyB the dominant pay TV provider in the UK.' Chenoweth reports that James Murdoch has been an advocate for tougher penalties for pirates, 'These are property rights, these are basic property rights,' he said. 'There is no difference from going into a store and stealing a packet of Pringles or a handbag, and stealing something online. Right?'"

Comments

News Corp Caught Hacking in US

[Required Snark]

News Corp already has a track record of computer crime in the US in 2004.

News America Marketing, the division of News Corp. that was going head-to-head with Floorgraphics, later admitted that someone in its office had illicitly accessed its competitor’s password-protected website. But an internal investigation, as well as subsequent probes by the FBI and the Secret Service, failed to pinpoint the person responsible.

Years later, after Floorgraphics’ lawsuit against News Corp. was settled and Henderson had received what he called a handsome exit payout, he openly talked about getting a peek at Floorgraphics’ forthcoming ad campaigns. Henderson’s co-workers didn't always know how much faith to put in their boss’s claims, but he certainly wasn’t one to mince words.

“He admitted he had information from inside Floorgraphics’ computer system. He knew how to get into their passwords,” one former News America staffer told New York. "He said he had the blessings of his bosses."

This incident followed the same pattern as the News of the World phone hacking scandal. An overly aggressive manager broke the law and was rewarded, and News Corp crushed the competition. When the bad deeds were found out the internal investigation was a joke:

As for News Corp.’s internal investigation, he concluded that it “falls far short of any standards in this area." The company made a cursory check of Henderson’s e-mail — “The only search conducted was a limited Outlook 'find' command" — but Cats concluded the company never interviewed Henderson or any other employees. Nor did it preserve a record of the investigation.

Then for some strange reason when the authorities investigate they decide not to press criminal charges (can you say political pressure, i knew you could). In the final stage, there is a civil case and it is settled out of court. In this case the total payout was $650 million. Note this figure includes some other wrongdoing besides the Floorgraphics case.

This is exactly what happened in the News of the World scandal, until The Guardian newspaper in England did some investigation and found out how massive the phone hacking was. Given these two cases, one in the US and one in the UK, what are the odds that News Corp is blameless in this situation.

RTFA

[Xest]

"And what about all the nerds that actually did it? It's not like he sat around writing code himself. What about their (existent?) scruples? Did they know who paid them or wonder why? Did they just ignore those questions so long as they could?"

None of that happened. The company that made the decryption cards was owned 50% by News International, and it made cards for Sky, and competitors like ITV's On Digital. Murdoch was a non-executive director at the company then this happened too.

There was no hacking, the company that made the cards was leaking the decryption keys, likely at the behest of James Murdoch/News International who had such a stake in the company.

Re:Too big to jail

[Spad]

If only there were some kind of independent judicial inquiry currently in progress that was investigating the culture, practice & ethics of the press...

At this point it's virtually impossible for politicians, at least in the UK, to avoid looking into anything involving News International or other new media organisations. Any attempt to deflect attention from allegations such as this would be met with a very nasty response from their voters.

In retrospect, the fact that it took the hacking and possible manipulation of a murdered girl's voicemail to get people to pay attention is a little depressing, but at least now they are paying attention.

Re:Rupert Murdoch has no scruples.

[mcgrew]

He sounds exactly like the sleazeballs from the M.A.F.I.A.A. FTFS:

'These are property rights, these are basic property rights,' he said. 'There is no difference from going into a store and stealing a packet of Pringles or a handbag, and stealing something online. Right?'"

Wrong. If I steal a handbag, gles the store no longer has that handbag. If I make a copy of that handbag, the store has lost nothing. And, this comment is NOT my property, not according to the US Constitution. It belongs to everyone, I merely have a limited time monopoly on its publication, NOT ownership.

"Intellectual property" is a lie. If you have to lie in order to make your case, your case is damned weak.