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In a statement to the Guardian, the Us intelligence agency says it bought a license from NSO Group for 'product testing and evaluation only' and not 'operational use' The FBI confirmed on Wednesday that it had purchased Pegasus spyware from Israel's NSO Group, but denied ever using it during an operation. In a statement to the Guardian, the FBI said it purchased the powerful cellphone hacking software in order to "stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft." The US security agency said it bought a "limited license" to use Pegasus for "product testing and evaluation only," and said "there was...

CNN’s cable shows have salivated at least seven times over climate activist James Murdoch’s virtue-signaling against Fox News in the past year, all while ignoring any mention of an atrocious media scandal that nearly nuked his career. News blew up in 2011 on how the now-defunct U.K. newspaper News of the World was set to publish its last issue following a massive phone-hacking scandal that occurred in the mid-2000s, which ultimately led to its demise. News Corporation Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s estranged son James was executive chairman for News International — then-parent company of News of the World — at...

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the second biggest shareholder in Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has revealed his frustration with the fallout from the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and admitted that it is harming the reputation of the company overall, not just its publishing interests.

When he’s not solving America’s gun problem, CNN host Piers Morgan spends an extraordinary amount of time battling his critics (there are many) and defending his journalistic integrity. In the course of doing the former, he frequently damages the latter. Because random Twitter trolls, long-time adversaries, and politically disagreeable guests on Piers Morgan Tonight are dismissed as hacks, morons, and scumbags. When I recently criticized him for trivializing the gun-control debate by arguing with unserious people on a very serious topic, Morgan responded with the grace and dignity befitting a CNN journalist: he called me a “poisonous little twerp” on...

Few seem to be enjoying the management meltdown at the venerable BBC more than Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. chief whose rival British newspapers have been caught up in their own lengthy, embarrassing and expensive phone-hacking scandal. But the troubles for both media organizations highlight that the news industry in Britain is at rock-bottom in public esteem, and could face increased restrictions from the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, which appears convinced it has been unable to police itself. The British Broadcasting Corp. has moved into full-bore damage control since it retracted mistaken allegations by its marquee news program...

He admitted he and his colleagues hacked into people's phones and paid police officers for tips. He confessed to lurking in unmarked vans outside people's houses, stealing confidential documents, rifling through celebrity garbage and pretending he was not a journalist pursuing a story but "Brad the teenage rent boy," propositioning a priest. After Paul McMullan, a former deputy features editor at Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid, had finished testifying at a judicial inquiry Tuesday, it was hard to think of any dubious newsgathering technique he had not confessed to. Nor were the practices he described limited to...

Former Beatle Paul McCartney said Thursday he would contact police over his ex-wife's claim that their private communication had been spied upon by British tabloid journalists. In comments to television journalists delivered via videolink from Cincinatti, Ohio, McCartney said that he would be in touch with police as soon as he was finished with his summer tour. "I will be talking to them about that," McCartney told the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles. "I don't think it's great. I do think it is a horrendous violation of privacy, and I do think it's been going on a long time,...

Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman said on Thursday that former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan "has got to answer" questions about phone hacking at the paper during the period he was editor. Harman told Sky News: "Morgan … said he heard a 'heart-breaking' phone message, which clearly gives rise to the assumption that he'd heard a tape-recorded message." Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail five years ago that he had once been played a message left by Sir Paul McCartney on the mobile phone of his then-girlfriend Heather Mills, in which the former Beatle sounded "lonely, miserable and desperate". Harman...

Despite a fast-spreading, false rumor that CNN had suspended Piers Morgan today, Mr. Morgan's talk show actually looks safe so far, as attempts to tie him to News Corp.'s phone-hacking scandal are failing to register with marketers. Media buying executives at various agencies say clients haven't signaled in any way that Mr. Morgan's "Piers Morgan Tonight" on CNN could become a hot spot. "It has not come up," said one of the executives. Nor do ad buyers seem to be following this thread very closely. A second executive had to be updated on how Mr. Morgan was possibly linked to...

Mr Morgan, a former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor who is now a high-profile television presenter in the US, has spent the past week categorically denying ever printing material derived from phone hacking. He spoke out after being accused by a Conservative MP and political bloggers of being involved in the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, for which he used to work. “For the record, in my time at the News of the World and the Mirror, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any...

Two Taliban spokesmen have said their phones had been hacked and messages sent out that their leader Mullah Omar was dead, media reports say. One of the spokesmen Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters that the "Americans have hacked our cellphones with advanced technology and sent the messages". Mullah Omar's death was reported in May by sections of the media, including an Afghan TV channel. Pakistani and US officials had dismissed the reports. Mullah Omar has evaded capture, despite one of the largest manhunts and is believed to be guiding the resurgent Taliban. The AFP news agency said that a message went...

LONDON (AP) — Police say Sean Hoare, the whistleblower reporter who alleged widespread hacking at the News of the World, has been found dead. Police said Hoare's death at his home in England was not considered to be suspicious, according to Britain's Press Association news agency. Hoare was quoted by The New York Times as saying that phone-hacking was widely used and even encouraged at the News of the World tabloid under then-editor Andy Coulson.