Privacy, Motherfuckers!
Ah, socio-political ranting at its potentially finest.
Look. It's one thing to listen in on people's mobile phone conversations and voicemail messages via hacking. It's a shitty and illegal thing, but it is one thing. It is an entirely different thing to hack somebody's voicemail, delete messages meant for someone else just for more heartstring-tugging fodder and thus not only screw around with a police investigation, but falsely raise the hopes of parents who are still just praying that their daughter's not dead.
So someone please tell me why the fuck this News of the World phone-hacking scandal is focusing on listening in on celebrities? Seriously. What the fuck.
I don't need to hear Boris Johnson going on about how everyone's doing it, even though it sucks, with pictures of celebs at the top of the page. I sure as hell don't need to hear comments from people who consider the lives of celebrities fair game going, "So what's the big deal? If anyone listened in on my phone conversations, they'd be bored to death! Just don't talk about private stuff on a mobile and you're fine!" While I get that it's really horrific that News of the World, likely amongst others, are hacking into people's private voicemail ... still they're all. Missing. The point. The point being, in case we forgot, that this whole thing went from ugly to truly evil when someone actively erased messages meant for others, just because they wanted to hear more messages for tabloid fodder. That's on par with shredding someone else's post, just because you got access to their mailbox. And when the person whose voicemail box is getting cleared happens to be missing and presumed dead ... well. Think of the implications when that voicemail box, which should have been full and thus bouncing back any new voicemail messages, suddenly gets emptied.
I think the problem with making this about celebrities' phone calls is that people honestly believe that celebrities' lives are fair game. They're not allowed privacy! They're not allowed lives! Oh, hell no! They're our property, and everything they do may now come under the microscope. WRONG. Celebs are allowed privacy just like everyone else, and the answer isn't "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" - particularly when we're talking about red-top tabloid arseholes who see it as a far more convenient way of digging up a scandal than anything else on offer at the moment. Since when did 'privacy' become a concept that we just sort of ignore in the face of ... I don't even know what they're thinking right now.
I honestly don't know what to do about this, beyond stopping newspapers from hacking people's voicemail. I get that you need to scoop the other guy however you can, but this snark about celebs being jealous that they're not on the list? That shit needs to go. So does the quasi-joking about how all politicians ought to have their phones and email accounts routinely tapped, preferably with the addition of an ASBO-style ankle-tag to monitor their movements. I wish people would focus on the fact that this bunch of morons from News of the World destroyed correspondence that was not theirs to destroy, potentially interfered with a police investigation and unwittingly (and without so much as caring about the implications) twisted the knife counter-clockwise on a family that just misses their daughter.
Fucktards.
Look. It's one thing to listen in on people's mobile phone conversations and voicemail messages via hacking. It's a shitty and illegal thing, but it is one thing. It is an entirely different thing to hack somebody's voicemail, delete messages meant for someone else just for more heartstring-tugging fodder and thus not only screw around with a police investigation, but falsely raise the hopes of parents who are still just praying that their daughter's not dead.
So someone please tell me why the fuck this News of the World phone-hacking scandal is focusing on listening in on celebrities? Seriously. What the fuck.
I don't need to hear Boris Johnson going on about how everyone's doing it, even though it sucks, with pictures of celebs at the top of the page. I sure as hell don't need to hear comments from people who consider the lives of celebrities fair game going, "So what's the big deal? If anyone listened in on my phone conversations, they'd be bored to death! Just don't talk about private stuff on a mobile and you're fine!" While I get that it's really horrific that News of the World, likely amongst others, are hacking into people's private voicemail ... still they're all. Missing. The point. The point being, in case we forgot, that this whole thing went from ugly to truly evil when someone actively erased messages meant for others, just because they wanted to hear more messages for tabloid fodder. That's on par with shredding someone else's post, just because you got access to their mailbox. And when the person whose voicemail box is getting cleared happens to be missing and presumed dead ... well. Think of the implications when that voicemail box, which should have been full and thus bouncing back any new voicemail messages, suddenly gets emptied.
I think the problem with making this about celebrities' phone calls is that people honestly believe that celebrities' lives are fair game. They're not allowed privacy! They're not allowed lives! Oh, hell no! They're our property, and everything they do may now come under the microscope. WRONG. Celebs are allowed privacy just like everyone else, and the answer isn't "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" - particularly when we're talking about red-top tabloid arseholes who see it as a far more convenient way of digging up a scandal than anything else on offer at the moment. Since when did 'privacy' become a concept that we just sort of ignore in the face of ... I don't even know what they're thinking right now.
I honestly don't know what to do about this, beyond stopping newspapers from hacking people's voicemail. I get that you need to scoop the other guy however you can, but this snark about celebs being jealous that they're not on the list? That shit needs to go. So does the quasi-joking about how all politicians ought to have their phones and email accounts routinely tapped, preferably with the addition of an ASBO-style ankle-tag to monitor their movements. I wish people would focus on the fact that this bunch of morons from News of the World destroyed correspondence that was not theirs to destroy, potentially interfered with a police investigation and unwittingly (and without so much as caring about the implications) twisted the knife counter-clockwise on a family that just misses their daughter.
Fucktards.