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Front: Phone-hacking scandal: Pinging How it works: How NoW could find anyone(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Senior journalists at the News of the World paid police officers to find celebrities or other people they wanted to write about by tracking their mobile phone signal, it was reported yesterday. The technique, which was known as "pinging" in the paper's newsroom, pinpoints handsets by using mobile phone masts to measure the strength of their signal, according to the New York Times. Its use normally has to be authorised by police and security forces with the mobile phone networks on a case-by-case basis under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), in which a request signed by a senior police officer is sent to the network authorising the location of the phone.Using those powers to locate individuals who were not the subject of a police surveillance or serious crime investigation would constitute a breach of Ripa - which was the basis for the jailing of the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman in 2007. The New York Times quoted an anonymous senior Scotland Yard source who said it could have been carried out for the paper by a senior officer, or a more junior officer who persuaded a higher-ranking colleague to carry out the search on their behalf. He said it would have constituted a "massive breach" of security. The New York Times said Sean Hoare, a former reporter at the News of the World, had established the location of a contact in Scotland by using the technique. Hoare said to the Guardian yesterday that he had obtained the information through Greg Miskiw, a former news editor, in advance of a trip to Scotland. "If you were told to find someone, you could go to the news desk, who would give Greg a piece of paper. Greg would sort it. It would cost pounds 300," he said. Hoare added: "Within 15 minutes or half an hour he'd come back and whack it on the table and say: 'There you go.'" He said that he didn't know exactly how the information was obtained but he suspected it was from police officers. The New York Times quoted another unnamed former News of the World reporter who said: "I knew it could be done and that it was done." Within each mobile network a handful of people with maximum security clearance are allowed to process Ripa requests, which total about 1,000 across the four networks annually, and are audited annually by the information commissioner. Each of the 56 police forces in the UK will have a similarly small number of people authorised to send Ripa requests to the networks - but that means there are around 200 people who could initiate requests. News International declined to comment. Greg Miskiw did not return a call seeking comment. (c) 2011 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |