July 9, 2009

Journalists have snouts just like the police do.

How else do you imagine they do their job? By asking a nice press officer and believing their carefully constructed answer that eventually comes back?

While the old bill has its sources in the underworld - mixing with the criminals it should be locking up but all for the greater good - likewise the hacks have their sources either inside the police itself or with someone with access to them.

It was ever the way, and will continue to be so.

Today's "revelations" won't be batting a single eyelid on Fleet Street.

It's not like they don't all know precisely what's being talked about.

How much subterfuge should or can be used to investigate a story is of course a moot point - and the public interest defence should be the arbiter there (though when it comes to commercial pressures in Fleet Street newsrooms and the never-sated thirst for exclusives, it of course goes out of the window and any pretence there is just that - pretence).

It's the people who supply these details that always fascinated me, though.

I knew of a bloke who got into the blagging world simply because he was a trained actor who couldn't get work - but was very convincing on the phone with the dorks at BT. He could charm the hind legs of the most stubborn donkey, that one.

Then there was the "contact" shared across the tabloids who'd sent in unsolicited business rate cards to the various newsdesks.

Topped with the letters "Mr E" - mystery, geddit? - what sat below on the laminated card was a menu offering - in exchange for money - ex-directory landline numbers, mobile numbers,
dialled lists, calls received, bank accounts, recent banking history, credit history, census searches, DVLA checks, criminal records, medical records - you get the picture.

Did I ever use this person's services? I can't recall (but if I did, I'm sure it was perfectly within the rules and the encouragement of the fees office news editor).

But I can recall the time when we tried to find out who the man was.

A photographer was assigned to hang around the bottom of Canary Wharf tower to get a surreptitious picture of the man, who always arrived on a motorbike to collect or deliver whatever it was he was providing (no emails - too traceable).

He marched into the foyer of One Canada Square, approached his journalist contact who was waiting there in the lobby, swapped parcels, then dashed out, hopped on his bike, and was gone.

Needless to say, we did a separate DVLA check on our spook. It was a false plate.

He turned up again a few years later when I was working up north. No longer Mr E - who in London offered the name "Nick" - he was now "Steve".

His distinctive voice was impossible to confuse with someone else offering precisely the same services.

The fact he had a turnaround time of 24 hours maximum - but he usually got back in just a couple of hours - was incredible.

Was he computer hacker?

Or a former GCHQ spook gone rogue?

We never knew. Probably never will.

The thing is, the more information about us all that is stored - whoever we are, Joe Public or Cheryl Cole - the more temptation there will be by people with access to it to flog it.

It's a nasty but inevitable part of human nature.

And as for today's moral outrage by MPs, bear in mind they're desperately hoping that this takes the spotlight off the fact that - albeit all within the rules - a great many of them have been robbing you and me blind for years, and years, and years... and it'll be a committee of those veritable MPs investigating all of this!

It's knockabout stuff all the same, though.

EDIT: How your phone can be hacked.