Another day, another revelation of Murdoch shamelessness in Britain:
Sienna Miller was today expected to become the latest public figure to join the legal assault on Scotland Yard and the News of the World over the phone-hacking scandal.
Lawyers for the actor, whose private life has long been a tabloid staple, said she was ready to join the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and others in asking the courts for a judicial review of the police‘s conduct of the case.
Sources at the News of the World said she had taken the first step towards suing the paper for invading her privacy by allegedly listening to her voicemail messages.
The legal moves came after Miller, 28, discovered that the paper’s private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, had procured her mobile phone numbers, account number and secret PIN code, needed to intercept the voicemail of the minority of people who change the factory settings on their phones.
It also emerged today that Sean Hoare, a former News of the World journalist who told the New York Times and the BBC about hacking at the paper under Coulson, has been interviewed by police under caution. Lawyers said this indicated he was being treated by police as a suspect. “An interview under caution would follow someone being arrested as a suspect, except in the most exceptional circumstances,” said Peter Lodder QC, a criminal barrister.
Paul McMullan, a second former News of the World staffer who told the Guardian that hacking was rife at the paper, was also contacted by detectives and told that they would like to question him under caution.