Six Former News of the World Employees Arrested

[Erica Absetz <eabsetz () opensecurityfoundation org>]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324162304578301742323586424.html

LONDON—Police in London on Wednesday arrested six former employees of
News Corp NWSA +0.65% .'s now-closed News of the World tabloid in
connection with what authorities described as a new line of inquiry in
their probe of phone-hacking at the paper.

London's Metropolitan Police said detectives have identified a
"further suspected conspiracy," alleged to have primarily taken place
in 2005 and 2006, in the long-running investigation into illegal
interception of telephone voice mails by the News of the World's
staff.

Police didn't identify the three men and three women arrested. They
range in age from 33 to 46. But a spokesman for News International,
News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper unit, said two of the six arrested are
current employees of News Corp.'s tabloid the Sun. News Corp. had no
further comment.

The phone-hacking scandal dates back to the arrests in 2006 of a News
of the World reporter and a private investigator on the company's
payroll. The two men were sentenced in 2007 after pleading guilty to
illegally intercepting voice-mail messages.

The company long said that phone hacking had been limited to those two
individuals. But later, evidence suggesting the practice was more
widespread surfaced in U.K. courts, and the scandal exploded anew in
2011 when it emerged that the News of the World had hacked the phone
of a teenager named Milly Dowler after her disappearance in 2002. She
was later found dead.

After news broke that the teen's phone had been hacked, News Corp.
acknowledged widespread wrongdoing and shut down the News of the
World. News Corp. ChairmanRupert Murdoch has called the scandal a
"major black eye" for the company.

News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

In addition to the phone-hacking investigation, Metropolitan Police
are also conducting inquiries into allegations of bribery and computer
hacking by journalists at News Corp.'s U.K. newspapers. A total of 106
people have now been arrested in the probes, including 32 in the
phone-hacking investigation.

About 20 people have now been charged in relation to the various
probes. That includes eight former News of the World journalists who
have been charged with intercepting voice mails—some of whom have also
been charged with other offenses such as bribery and conspiring to
pervert the course of justice.
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