One of the lesser known features of the ring of agents that former Scotland Yard Commander Ray Adams ran for NewsCorp/NDS was that he had an informant placed at Cambridge University to spy on its cryptology work. Continue reading →

A side track into the world of Australian shock jocks: there’s a lot of wacky claims made about Alan Jones and his success in the latest ratings survey.

It’s certainly not in the interest of commercial radio stations to acknowledge that a massive social media campaign like #destroyingthejoint has had an effect not just in scaring away advertisers, but also audiences. Continue reading →

The 1998-99 undercover operation that followed NewsCorp/NDS’s success with Operation Johnny Walker in North America remains shrouded in mystery.

It’s almost as if there were two separate undercover operations. One was a huge success, a coup for US Custom and the FBI that triggered headlines across the United States. The other operation, as described in NDS internal emails, careered out of control. Continue reading →

The next NewsCorp/NDS undercover operation after the debacle in Toronto would be played straight by the book—perhaps for that reason, it was one of NDS’s successful operations. Continue reading →

You’re running a NewsCorp/NDS anti-piracy operation that involves helping hackers to pirate a competitor’s product to win their trust—so when do you need to tell your competitor what you’re doing? Continue reading →

News Corp and NDS counsel must have known it was going to get ugly, after NDS chief Abe Peled flew out of the country the night before he was due to testify. But did they really have any idea just how upset Judge David Carter was going to get? Continue reading →

In April 2008, the month that James Murdoch agreed secretly to pay Gordon Taylor £700,000 to settle a UK phone hacking claim, Judge David Carter in the District Court of California was asking questions about corporate responsibility—when a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation was accused of corrupt behaviour, how high in the chain of command should executives be called to account? Continue reading →

In mid-2007 the New York Times ran a survey from political website “The Hotline”, which had set out to track “face time”: the amount of time in the previous six months that the 18 Democrat and Republican candidates had appeared on NBS, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox or MSNBC. Some 3,363 minutes of interviews were tallied, and the Times ended up with a table showing how each of the 18 candidates had fared in terms of air time, being interviewed on the six networks, excluding news reports or taking part on panels. Inevitably, it was portrayed as a bubble diagram. Continue reading →

As the clock ticks down in the last days of the US election, it’s already clear who one of the losers has been. Continue reading →

NDS Operational Security chief Reuven Hasak on how Ray Adams’ hard drive went missing, and his plan to sue him immediately after the 2008 EchoStar trial. (This does not appear to have occurred). Given the strength of Hasak’s comments it would be very surprising then if any branch of News Corporation or its associates had ever provided financial or other assistance to Adams, directly or indirectly, after his departure from NDS in May 2002. Continue reading →