ABSTRACT
Introduction In the last few years there has been a scandal around what has been called ‘phone-hacking’. It became increasingly clear that journalists on at least one newspaper, and perhaps several others, used private detectives to hack into people’s personal voicemails and other private data on their mobile phones. At fi rst, it was thought that this was confi ned to the personal details of a few ‘celebrities’ and although there was public and political concern, it was by no means overwhelming. In time, however, what really turned the furore into a full-blown scandal was the revelation that crime victims had also had their phones hacked, including the reading and deleting of messages on the phone of 13-year-old schoolgirl Millie Dowler, who disappeared in 2002. Here was a story that was not just about crime and the media, but crime by the media (Davies, 2014).
