Hacked Off In The UK

The News Corp phone hacking scandal is now getting huge.  It was bad enough when the targets were tabloid subjects, but now we learn the victims included 9/11 victims' families and may have included even former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown himself.

The Sunday Times is alleged to have targeted the personal information of the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the time he was chancellor, a BBC investigation has found.

Documents and a phone recording suggest "blagging" was used to obtain private financial and property details.

The Browns also fear medical records relating to their son Fraser, whom the Sun revealed in 2006 had cystic fibrosis, may have been obtained.

News International is yet to respond.

The company, a subsidiary of News Corporation, owns the Sun and the Sunday Times, and also owned the News of the World which was shut last week amid allegations of phone-hacking and illegal payments to police officers.

Other alleged targets include British royalty, too.  When they weren't hacking phone mails, Murdoch's tabloid reporters were apparently pretending to be government officials or other folks in order to get information on their targets to print. Anything to get the story went for these guys, and now Murdoch has been exposed.  Hell, the guy went after Gordon Brown's infant son just to get a story.

The question now of course is what kind of criminal tricks went on over here in the States.  It's like someone should investigate or something.  Meanwhile, News Corp. shareholders are suing Murdoch for not responding to the scandal fast enough.

The lawsuit, filed by Amalgamated Bank and a group of pension funds, accuses News Corp's board of "failing to exercise proper oversight and take sufficient action since news of the hacking first surfaced at its subsidiary nearly six years ago."

The failure of News Corp's board has led to a "piling on of questionable deals, a waste of corporate resources, a starring role in a blockbuster scandal, and a gigantic public relations disaster," said Jay Eisenhofer of Grant & Eisenhofer, the law firm that filed the suit in Delaware.

The legal complaint is an updated version of action that Amalgamated first bought in March, when they accused Mr Murdoch of "rampant nepotism" for paying 415m pounds for Shine, a UK television production company founded by his daughter Elizabeth. News Corp could not immediately be reached for comment. 

News Corp's shares plunged more than 6.6pc on opening, as investors digested developments on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Things are getting bad for ol' Rupert here.  Very, very bad.