British royal family snooping probe widens

By Peter Graff

LONDON (Reuters) – What began as a case of a reporter
suspected of eavesdropping on the British royal household has
broadened into a probe of possible snooping on a wide array of
politicians and celebrities, police said on Wednesday.

British police were questioning two men, one of them a
reporter who covers the royal family for the country’s biggest
selling newspaper, after some of Prince Charles’s staff said
they thought someone was listening to their phones.

Police said phone companies were helping them check whether
someone had been snooping on other rich and powerful people.

“We don’t know the full scale of it yet,” a police source
said, asking not to be named. “We’re looking at numbers: what
other public figures might have been subject to the
interception.”

The News of the World newspaper, a Sunday tabloid,
confirmed its royal correspondent Clive Goodman was one of two
men held on Wednesday for an additional 12 hours of quizzing
after being arrested on Tuesday. A third man arrested was freed
on bail.

Police have not said what form the suspected eavesdropping
took. Palace sources say the staff believed someone was
secretly playing back their mobile phone voicemail messages.

Security experts say that sort of snooping would be easier
than intercepting live calls.

Britain’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 makes
it a crime to intercept communication on public telecoms
systems — including e-mail and voicemail — without proper
authority.

The case has intrigued a public used to the tactics of
hungry tabloids desperate for scoops. It recalls the
“Squidgygate” and “Camillagate” scandals of the early 1990s,
when newspapers obtained phone conversations of heir to the
throne Charles and of his late wife Diana.

Back then, Diana was taped talking to her lover James
Gilbey, who called her “Squidgy.” Charles was recorded
memorably telling his then mistress — now wife — Camilla
Parker Bowles that he wanted to be reincarnated as her tampon.

Tabloids have since sent undercover reporters to get jobs
as palace servants. A Daily Mirror reporter hired as a palace
footman in 2003 revealed, among other things, that Queen
Elizabeth ate breakfast cereal served in a plastic bowl.

Other newspaper reporters have since been arrested trying
to repeat the stunt.

Veterans of Fleet Street — the collective name given to
British newspapers which used to be located on that “street of
shame” in central London — say there is nothing unexpected
about journalists being accused of eavesdropping.

“It’s been around I would say for the best part of the last
80 years,” said James Whitaker, veteran royal correspondent of
the Daily Mirror, who said he has received tip-offs from
sources that had access to intercepted radio communications.

“Phone tapping. Bugging. Whatever you call it. It’s not
just the royals. Ministers, famous people,” he said. “But if
you get caught, you get into trouble.”

(Additional reporting by Michael Holden)