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Police threaten journalists who revealed hacking scandal

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Summary of story from The Independent, September 17, 2011

The decision by the London Metropolitan Police to use the Official Secrets Act to try to force journalists investigating phone hacking at the former UK tabloid, the News of the World (NoTW), to reveal their sources has been attacked as a “misuse of power”.

Revelations during the summer that the phone of a murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, had been hacked led to the tabloid’s closure (see WVoN coverage).

Articles written by Guardian journalists Amelia Hill and Nick Davies on July 4 disclosed the – illegal – interceptions.

The Metropolitan Police claim Ms Hill could have incited police on Operation Weeting – which is looking into the illegal use of phone intercepts – to leak information relating to the Dowler family, the former NOTW editor, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks, News International’s former chief executive, and other arrested executives.

Chris Bryant, a Labour MP whose phone was among the list of numbers held by the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who worked for the NOTW, said:

“The Met lurch from refusing to examine material seized from Mulcaire, refusing to notify victims of phone hacking, and suddenly they try to pursue those who did the job [they] should have done in the first place. It is extraordinary.”

The decision to use the Official Secrets Act to force disclosure of The Guardian’s source is unusual and was last used unsuccessfully 11 years ago.

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