Sky News is the one of the British parts of Rupert Murdoch’s worldwide media empire. It started with the now well-known News of the World debacle that included reporters hacking into the phones of families of British service personnel who had been killed on duty. Now, another of Murdoch’s media power houses, the Sky News has been accused of the same type of offense. Invading the privacy of innocent citizens in hopes of getting news to print. It’s the same kind of behavior that got News of the World shut down entirely.

Of course, the case that Sky News used as the backdrop to their justification for hacking emails is a taudry one. One reminisicient of a made for TV movie. John Darwin was in desperate financial straits. So desperate in fact that it led to his attempt to fake his own death so that he and his wife could receive 500,000 pounds worth of an insurance payment.

In 2002 he got in his canoe and paddled away from shore. He was declared dead soon after and his wife cashed the insurance check and pensions and moved to Panama. A problem surfaced however 5 years later when the law changed regarding visas and immigration. He was being forced to leave Panama and return to the UK. The problem with that was that everyone thought he was dead.

Sky News learned of an email account that was being used by Darwin to communicate with his wife and attorney. They then hacked into that account and directly quoted sections of the emailed exchanges between the couple. Unfortunately for Sky News, the interception of emails is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act. But Sky News, and Murdoch, all excuse the act by claiming that it was the right of the people to know what happened. So even though Sky News broke the law in hacking the email account, because the person who owned the account was guilty of fraud and part of a criminal investigation, no one at Sky News will be prosecuted for the crime. So why is no one asking the question, how many more email accounts were invaded for the purpose of providing news to the masses.

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