The phone hacking scandal and subsequent investigation coverup involving Rupert Murdoch's News International and British police targeted not just celebrities, and the families of murder and terrorism victims, but the royal family, and now, it turns out, former prime minister Gordon Brown. Multiple Murdoch tabloids hacked into Brown's tax, phone, bank, and medical records, including real-time intrusions into doctors' discussions of the Browns' newborn children's life-threatening medical conditions:
Confidential health records for Brown's family have reached the media on two different occasions. In October 2006, the then editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks, contacted the Browns to tell them that they had obtained details from the medical file of their four-month-old son, Fraser, which revealed that the boy was suffering from cystic fibrosis. This appears to have been a clear breach of the Data Protection Act, which would allow such a disclosure only if it was in the public interest. Friends of the Browns say the call caused them immense distress, since they were only coming to terms with the diagnosis, which had not been confirmed. The Sun published the story.News International went on to withhold evidence of its criminal actions for several years from a police investigation. Which is now the subject of a separate investigation.
News International papers targeted Gordon Brown [guardian.co.uk]
