{"id":8614,"date":"2011-07-18T20:14:18","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T03:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=8614"},"modified":"2011-07-18T20:14:07","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T03:14:07","slug":"news-of-the-world-whistleblower-found-dead-murdoch-not-but-sun-hacked-to-report-he-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/?p=8614","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;News of the World&#8217; Whistleblower Found Dead, Murdoch Not (But &#8216;Sun&#8217; Hacked to Report He Was)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good grief. So, this happened today&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/TheSun_Hacked_MurdochBodyDiscovered.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>No, Rupert Murdoch didn&#8217;t really die. But <i>The Sun<\/i>, another paper owned by his News International, was hacked by the &#8220;hacktivists&#8221; of Anonymous and\/or LulzSec. At least one of the hackers involved is said to have also been involved in the <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8351\">HBGary Federal hack<\/a> earlier this year in which some 70,000 emails were stolen, posted on the Internet, and turned out to reveal they were working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to develop a plot which included <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8354\">targeting me and my family<\/a>, among other progressives perceived to be enemies of the U.S. Chamber.<\/p>\n<p>The hackers say they have also stolen thousands of emails from <i>The Sun<\/i> and <i>News of The World<\/i> and plan to release them tomorrow <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.forbes.com\/andygreenberg\/2011\/07\/18\/anonymous-hackers-hack-the-sun-newspaper-to-declare-murdoch-dead-claim-stolen-emails\/\">according to Andy Greenberg at <i>Forbes<\/i>&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">Just a day after the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of New Corp.&#8217;s&nbsp;British subsidiary and editor of its&nbsp;<em>The&nbsp;Sun<\/em> newspaper for phone hacking charges, the hacker groups took credit Monday for defacing the paper&#8217;s website to redirect to a fake homepage (archived <a href=\"http:\/\/freze.it\/pX\">here<\/a>) that claimed its&nbsp;owner, News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch, had died of a drug overdose.<\/p>\n<p>Worse may be ahead for the <em>The Sun<\/em> than mere graffiti: A hacker who goes by the handle Sabu claims that the hacker groups had also accessed <em>The Sun<\/em>&#8216;s and defunct sister paper&nbsp;<em>News Of The World&#8217;s <\/em>emails, and may release them in coming days. &#8220;Sun\/News of the world OWNED,&#8221; he <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/anonymouSabu\/status\/93062692327264256\">writes<\/a>. &#8220;We&#8217;re sitting on their emails. Press release tomorrow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sabu and other Anonymous-related twitter feeds followed by twittering email addresses and passwords for Rebekah Brooks and Bill Akass, an editor who has held positions at <em>The Sun<\/em> and <em>News of the World<\/em>, and Danny Rogers, currently online editor at <em>The Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have owned Sun\/News of the World,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/LulzSec\/status\/93066519910678528\">added a tweet<\/a> from LulzSec, the hacker group that went on a hacking spree targeting the CIA, Sony and PBS earlier this year only to supposedly disband last month. &#8220;That story is simply phase 1 &#8211; expect the lulz to flow in coming days.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>No word yet on whether we&#8217;ll learn tomorrow, when the emails are released, that <i>Murdoch<\/i> also had a $12 million plot in the works to try and undo me, as the Chamber did.<\/p>\n<p>Later in the day News Corp.&#8217;s <i>Times of London<\/i> was also reportedly taken down by the hackers, and at this hour, the website of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsinternational.co.uk\">News International<\/a>, the British arm of News Corp., is inaccessible.<\/p>\n<p>But all of that is the &#8220;fun&#8221; part. Here comes the troubling part. While Murdoch didn&#8217;t <i>actually<\/i> die today, one of the whistleblowers at the heart of Murdoch\/News Corp.&#8217;s <i>News of the World<\/i> hacking scandal, apparently did&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/SeanHoare_med.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">As <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/07\/news_of_the_world_whistleblower_reportedly_found_d.php?ref=fpb\">detailed by Talking Points Memo<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">In another twist in the <em>News Of The World<\/em> scandal, a former reporter for the tabloid who initially alleged that editor Andy Coulson knew about the practice of phone hacking by his staff, was reportedly found dead Monday.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/media\/2011\/jul\/18\/news-of-the-world-sean-hoare\"><em>The Guardian<\/em><\/a> reports that though police wouldn&#8217;t confirm the identity of the man found dead, it is believed to be Sean Hoare, formerly of <em>NOTW<\/em> and <em>The Sun<\/em>, who worked under Coulson but was fired for alcohol and drug problems in 2005. According to the police report, &#8220;the death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nHoare reported on show business for <em>NOTW<\/em>, and was the first journalist to go on the record with allegations that Coulson knew about the hacking operations. He told the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/09\/05\/magazine\/05hacking-t.html?adxnnl=1&amp;adxnnlx=1311010743-vZmx2X2E0Vs\/MS8dPyyhsw&amp;pagewanted=3\"><em>New York Times<\/em><\/a> last September that Coulson not only knew about the practice, but &#8220;actively encouraged me to do it.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nHoare told <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/media\/2011\/jul\/18\/news-of-the-world-sean-hoare\"><em>The Guardian<\/em><\/a> that reporters would go to the news desk to locate someone and would have an answer within &#8220;15 to 30 minutes&#8221;: &#8220;You&#8217;d just go to the news desk and they&#8217;d just come back to you. You don&#8217;t ask any questions. You&#8217;d consider it a job done. The chain of command is one of absolute discipline and that&#8217;s why I never bought into it, like with Andy saying he wasn&#8217;t aware of it and all that. That&#8217;s bollocks.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>After leaving <i>NOTW<\/i> some years ago, in the wake of the emergence of the now-very-quickly-growing Murdoch\/News Corp. hacking scandal, Coulson was hired by British Prime Minister David Cameron to serve as his Communications Director.  Coulson was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2012540\/ANDY-COULSON-ARRESTED-Camerons-ex-aide-quizzed-phone-hacking.html\">arrested last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose it&#8217;s also worth noting that the British police who report that Soare&#8217;s death is &#8220;currently being treated as unexplained but not thought to be suspicious&#8221;, are also fingered as part of the hacking scandal in which police were allegedly bribed for cell phone numbers used to hack into the voice mails of celebrities, politicians, a murder victim and, reportedly, troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Golly. It&#8217;s &#8220;great&#8221; to be back.<\/p>\n<p>(BTW, as mentioned in <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=8613\">the previous item<\/a>, I&#8217;m buried deep in a fairly large series of stories, so may be quiet-ish for a bit around here until I can pop those&#8230;unless the Chamber or Murdoch or&#8230;someone else&#8230;gets me first.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good grief. So, this happened today&#8230; No, Rupert Murdoch didn&#8217;t really die. But The Sun, another paper owned by his News International, was hacked by the &#8220;hacktivists&#8221; of Anonymous and\/or LulzSec. At least one of the hackers involved is said to have also been involved in the HBGary Federal hack earlier this year in which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[489,470],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-corp","category-us-chamber-of-commerce"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}