The best whistleblower so far from inside News International has just been found dead. Hertfordshire Police, either incredibly stupid or incredibly corrupt, have just been quoted on Sky News as saying there are “No suspicious circumstances”.
Whaether this is a convenient heart attack or a Kelly type “suicide” remains to be seen. Maybe the Met mistook him for a suicide bomber and pumped several shots into his head. With the exception of Kelly, this is possibly the most suspicious death of my lifetime. “No suspicious circumstances”. WTF!!
Sean Hoare’s testimony that Andy Coulson knew of individual phone hacking operations is pretty well certain to be true. I have written many times for national newspapers, and wherever I have written disparagingly about anybody, I have had to give my evidence. I have even, for example, been called in actually to meet the legal advisers at the Mail and discuss my evidence. The idea that journalists were not telling Coulson where they got their stories, or for what purpose they were laying out tens of thousands of pounds, is simply not practically possible. Same goes for the period when Rebekah was editor.
Sean Hoare’s testimony was plainly, absolutely true. His death discourages other whistleblowers a bit, doesn’t it? If the inquiries into News International are going to have any credibility, they are going to need a witness protection programme – from which the Met are totally excluded.
Anonymous/lulzsec had put up a story about Rupert Murdoch committing suicide. He mixed up a concoction in the kitchen and then stumbled outside and fell over the topiary … I should have taken a screengrab.
Now it’s saying “Apache Server at http://www.new-times.co.uk Port 80″.
Looks like the Sun hasn’t got it back yet.
“You don’t have permission to access /sun/ on this server”
.
EYE ON MURDOCH SMART CARD MAKER
.
And at least at the moment, the controversy swirls around a small British company owned by one of the world’s most powerful media magnates.
.
That company, NDS, makes smart cards which unlock 28 million of the world’s satellite set-top boxes. Owned by News Corp. and its flamboyant owner Rupert Murdoch, NDS now finds itself on the receiving end of a $1.1 billion lawsuit filed in March by French rival Canal Plus Technologies. Canal Plus comes with its own heavyweights attached — Vivendi Universal, and its now embattled CEO Jean-Marie Messier.
.
The Canal Plus lawsuit claims NDS paid hackers to break the code in Canal Plus smart cards, then gave the information away on the Internet, all to undermine Canal Plus business. It’s probably the largest computer hacking lawsuit ever, and one of the biggest accusations of corporate espionage.
.
An NDS motion to dismiss the case was heard by a federal court in San Francisco Thursday, although the judge did not immediately issue a ruling — that could come in the coming days or weeks. Meanwhile, depositions are set to begin next month. With Canal Plus lawyers vowing to wage a very public court battle, the next few weeks will likely raise the curtain on a 5-year drama, unraveling a complicated world where the interests of small time TV-pirates and moguls bent on dominating the world’s media have at times overlapped rather neatly.
.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078551/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/where-piracy-profits-converge/
Another bottle of red and I might be joining these Champagne and Cognac swilling jet-set minglers with cirrhosis of the liver. How much red wine does it take to get cirrhosis of the liver? The truth as I see it is there are many sober issues that need addressing, soberly. Wine helps me relax. The evidence indicates that tomorrow I could be as relaxed as a corpse.
NDS by the way is News Corps encryption system for sky tv
.
1998: HACKER FOUND DEAD
.
The following year, in 1998, NDS went looking for more smart card expertise and contacted brilliant German hacker Boris Floricic. Known as “Tron” in the computer underground, Floricic had gained a reputation for cracking pay-TV systems.
.
A few weeks later, in October of 1998, Floricic was found dead,
hanging from a tree in a Berlin park. The death was ruled a suicide by authorities – a ruling many hackers reject.
.
There has never been any assertion that NDS was somehow involved in the death. But the fact that Floricic’s father found a letter from NDS in his son’s belongings indicated the company’s willingness to consult the computer underground for security expertise.
.
The incident also shocked the hacker community, which wondered if computer curiosity could now have deadly consequences.}
.
http://osdir.com/ml/encryption.general/2002-06/msg00009.html
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker
NDS by the way is News Corps encryption system for sky tv
.
1998: HACKER FOUND DEAD
.
The following year, in 1998, NDS went looking for more smart card expertise and contacted brilliant German hacker Boris Floricic. Known as “Tron” in the computer underground, Floricic had gained a reputation for cracking pay-TV systems.
.
A few weeks later, in October of 1998, Floricic was found dead,
hanging from a tree in a Berlin park. The death was ruled a suicide by authorities – a ruling many hackers reject.
.
There has never been any assertion that NDS was somehow involved in the death. But the fact that Floricic’s father found a letter from NDS in his son’s belongings indicated the company’s willingness to consult the computer underground for security expertise.
.
The incident also shocked the hacker community, which wondered if computer curiosity could now have deadly consequences.}
.
http://osdir.com/ml/encryption.general/2002-06/msg00009.html
The Sun hacked by “Louise Boat” just announced on the Sky News Press Preview. I think she misread “Lulz Boat”. This comes shortly after Fox news twitter feed announced the death of Obama a few weeks ago after a supposed hack.
There was much hilarity on Twitter when they hacked the Fox twitter feed. When Fox had got it back, someone started a hashtag #foxnewtwitterpassword (or similar) and some of the suggestions were funny. One of them was “whoneedsfactswhenyoucanmakestuffup”
.
Lulzsec just tweeted: So News International released this AMAZING statement on The Sun: http://newsint.co.uk/statement_regarding_the_sun.html We improved it for them though!
.
Twitter is awaiting the next move.
“Charles Arthur, the Guardian’s technology editor, has filed a piece on Lulzsec’s hack of the Sun’s website.
“The hacker collective also claimed to be “sitting on their [the Sun’s] emails” and that they would release them on Tuesday.
“According to Charles, the episode demonstrated that News International’s systems have been vulnerable to hackers for some time. Rumours had surfaced that the hacking collective Anonymous would hit the site last week, but nothing appeared to come of it.
“We have owned Sun/News of the World – that [Murdoch] story is simply phase 1 – expect the lulz [laughs] to flow in coming days,” Topiary tweeted from the LulzSec account.
.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/18/phone-hacking-scandal-live-coverage
According to http://twitter.com/#!/BigBrotherXtra if you accessed the original hacked site with the Murdoch death story using IE8 you may now be part of a botnet. I didn’t see the original redirected site so I can’t verify if that is true or not.
I don’t know how cynical I can get. Another bottle might decide. But I read your feed, Canspeccy, and also your link from the Telegraph. I realise from this it was mostly pathological evidence, that the Telegraph article would have us believe, that decided Dr David Kelly died from self-inflicted wounds. However there was other evidence, lack of fingerprints for example, that the Telegraph article does not appear to address, or how he got non-prescription medicine, and why there was so little of this non-prescription medicine found in his stomach.
Especially when the deaths of public figures are concerned, who clearly have a contribution to make against those holding oppositional philosophies, they should be scrutinised with knit-combs, whatever their political persuasions. Leaving the truth to emerge seventy years after a person’s death is not good enough.
The other thing is, and this might seem even more cynical. This article appeared the same time Sean Hoare died. Draw your own conclusions.
The Chairman and CEO of NDS is an Israeli and has links to the intelligence services of that nation and has studied in the USA. The plot thickens.
From Wikipedia:
As of 2009, Abe Peled is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NDS Group plc, a leading provider of technology solutions for the pay TV industry. He was appointed to this position in 1995 and during his tenure the company has expanded rapidly and grown tenfold, achieving an over 35% market share in the global digital technology for pay TV industry; a significant proportion of this growth has resulted from being News Corporation’s in-house technology provider and the continuing success of that company’s pay TV strategy. NDS is a privately owned company, jointly owned by Permira, the majority shareholder, and News Corporation. Peled is also a Member of the News Corporation Executive Committee.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/ has gone down now.
.
And BigBrotherXtra says
“BREAKING news international admins freaked out and unplugged the nameserver ns0/ns1.newsint.co.uk –> more than 200 sites down”
.
I don’t believe that about the botnet, though. They don’t operate like that. You can download software if you want to be part of their DDOS attacks. They don’t load your computer.
Regarding the death of Bob Cryer in a car crash, from an archived Independent report of the incident;
“BOB CRYER, the left-wing Labour MP for Bradford South and a former junior minister, was killed yesterday in a car accident, writes Donald Macintyre.
Mr Cryer’s Rover crashed at 1.24pm on the M1 near Junction 5 for Watford as he was driving down to London for the return of the Commons after the Easter recess.
His wife, Ann, was thought to have suffered minor injuries. Scotland yard said: ‘The car overturned, ending up on its roof. It’s believed no other vehicle was involved.’ ”
It would be interesting to hear Ann Cryer’s version of events and if she suspected foul play at the time.
Of course these events may just be fate and not any plot.
dreoilin I didn’t think it likely myself but the BigBrotherXtra feed tweeted the following specific info:
BigBrotherXtra Big Brother on FIVE.
Fired up my spare machine – testing the page – its injecting code, it’s planted a trojan and set my homepage to ‘ poony.info ‘
1 hour ago
Big Brother on FIVE.
===
Oh dear, then maybe it is true. I’m surprised though.
Glad I was on Firefox!
Suhayl,
There is most definitely ‘a far deeper well of evil’. This well has used all these lackeys to bring about its purpose. But over the last view years this evil has come dangerously near to exposure, so it may be now that a huge operation is being undertaken to clean up and grab Murdoch’s assets into the bargain.
So the argument here is that although Sean Hoare has long since let out the secrets he knew about he was killed to…er…silence him?
.
And now the Guardian are suddenly in on it with their “planted” stories about his drink and drugs lifestyle?
.
Craig: “And according to the Guardian today, at the weekend he was helping take down a marquee – so not a physical wreck then.”
.
Yes, brilliant point, Hercule Murray, except if you Google “man dies of heart attack” you’ll find that people die suddenly while doing all kinds of strenuous activity and not long after: “The Summit County coroner tells the Summit Daily that the man died Sunday. … man had a history of medical issues and that he likely had a heart attack.” and “Six boys were hospitalized after a Boy Scout leader had a fatal heart attack while driving them home from summer camp” while Oliver Reed didn’t look like a “physical wreck” when he was arm-wrestling in the Pub during filming breaks for Gladiator.
.
“It will be interesting whether there were any witnesses to this accident – there are other explanations for a broken nose and foot. I think the “he was a druggie, bound to die any second” argument is a bit convenient.”
.
Well, yes. It would be the daftest cover story ever concocted to say that he had had an accident taking down a marquee at which nobody else was present.
.
“Look at Keith Richards, for God’s sake.”
.
Yes, just look at him! But why? What does looking at Keith Richards do for anyone? Are you arguing Keith Richards hasn’t died despite his legendary drugs and drink intake therefore Sean Hoare couldn’t have? What about Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon or Brian Jones?
YugoStiglitz: “I’m just waiting for you folks to blame this on the Jews somehow.”
.
Parky: “The Chairman and CEO of NDS is an Israeli and has links to the intelligence services of that nation and has studied in the USA. The plot thickens.”
.
Well, that didn’t take long.
The honesty of Sean Hoare’s testimony to the New York Times & to Panorama was extremely embarrassing to the dissemblers he was ranged against. Whether these same dissemblers had a direct hand in his death is unproven at this point, and will probably remain so.
I’d rather not conspiracy theorise so soon after Mr Hoare’s tragic passing, but instead will just note the sheer coincidence in the fact that he died at almost exactly the same age(49) as a reporter from across the pond who also blurted out a few embarrassing truths that offended the PTB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
The Murdoch-NI-Met-pols nexus is, in essence, a criminal organization.
No one should be surprised that there’s an associated body count. Sean Hoare is most likely not the first.
We know, from the death of Dr. David Kelly, that elements within the Blair government were, at the very least, willing to circumvent UK law to allow a highly suspicious death to go uninvestigated. We also know, from the NI-enabled ramp-up to the Iraq War, that these elements did not care if that body count climbed into the six-figures. We know that elements within the Met derailed the murder investigation (via threats and harassment of their own detectives) of Jonathan Rees’s former business partner. These people don’t fool around.
This is the tip of an iceberg. What we’re seeing is, in effect, a criminal gang that’s been in operation for some time with far-reaching consequences.
If anyone wants to start digging, a good place to start would be with the death of Manchester Chief Constable Michael Todd in 2008. The way in which he is alleged to have died defies credulity; the way in which ‘sources’ were immediately swarming to Sky News with information on his alleged affairs(while serving with the Met in London)now deserves a deeper look.
Given what we know now about the Met and corruption, one wonders what was really going on there.
Todd had been tasked with cleaning up corruption and racism in Manchester and was tipped to be a future commissioner of Scotland Yard. At the time of his death, he was vice-president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and his death came shortly before Ian Blair was notified he was on his way out.
Hard to believe? Certainly, it’s easier on the brain that accepting the ‘facts’ of Todd’s death — but I guess hill-walking, for some folks, will always have its risks.
“12.54am: My colleague, James Ball, tweets:
.
News International’s DNS servers (link web addresses to servers) and all 1,024 web addresses are down. Likely protective takedown by admins.
.
12.49am: The Times has confirmed that its web addresses have been taken down as a precautionary measure.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/18/phone-hacking-scandal-live-coverage
.
Ok, me for bed. Probably a big news day tomorrow. Again.
“Yes, just look at him! But why? What does looking at Keith Richards do for anyone? Are you arguing Keith Richards hasn’t died despite his legendary drugs and drink intake therefore Sean Hoare couldn’t have? What about Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon or Brian Jones?”
Yes, Hercule Murray, what is your response to the fact that people die all the time?
I once knew a young lawyer who die banging his wife. Must have been an inside job!
Angry said: “So the argument here is that although Sean Hoare has long since let out the secrets he knew about he was killed to…er…silence him?”
.
No, because he hadn’t gone on sworn record with his comments, just as Dr. Mitty had not (after the latter’s initial testimony, of course). That should be obvious to any fool, but to someone of your vanity it must be galling to write crap like that. I appreciate you’ve got to pump the establishment line, Angry, even slavishly attempting to anticipate and lead it. But – as with “teabagger” Larry’s, your positing on any subject suggests that more suspicion is required. Your joint credibility is well into negative territory.
.
Surprise resignations at the most senior level, desperation at the heart of government, sackings, the most powerful people in the world making grovelling apologies even after years of their minions denying anything was amiss (such as your efforts even in this thread). When people start showing up dead aswell, my first thought is, “Nothing going on here that we don’t know about already. Yup, we’ve got the full story now, and I’ll trust the Official Line.”
.
Thank the Lord that Angry is there, assuring us (as always!) there’s nothing to see, and to move right along. That’s me convinced anyway.
“I appreciate you’ve got to pump the establishment line, Angry, even slavishly attempting to anticipate and lead it.”
.
One of the things I love about the comments is Glenn’s witless malaproprisms such as “Slavishly attempting to lead…” that he liberally sprinkles into his tantrums. LOL!
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet but David Kelly and Sean Hoare were both found dead on the same date – 18th July.
Angrysoba, and so did Mary Jo Kopechne! My God! This involves the Kennedys!
Well, Yugo, at root, in his account, Craig’s refusal to acquiesce in torture and murder in Uzbekistan is the original reason Craig Murray’s blog exists, is it not? So, I’m simply asking you what your opinion of Islam Karimov is. Simple question. I would wager that 99.9% of the contributors to this blog over the past several years – whether of Right, Left, Centre, green/cosmic or no particular political stance – would have no difficulty whatsoever in answering the question.
.
Lola Karimov, the daughter of the dictator (I’m so glad we’re all able to say that now, ‘the daughter of the dictator’, since the court ruling in Paris) was in the news again just yesterday. So I was reminded of the centrality of the Karimovs, and everything they represent, in relation to Craig Murray’s blog. Ah! Here, emerging as though from a Sting song), as though she is again, the daughter of the dictator:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/uzbekistan/8611896/French-court-rules-against-libel-claim-from-Uzbekistan-dictators-daughter.html
.
So, Yugostiglitz, respectfully and politely, here once again is my very simple question: What is your opinion of the President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov and his family? Thank you for your time.
That really doesn’t answer my question, or specifically what’s behind my question. Why would you think it would be possible that I would ever say a kind word about Karimov?