Murdoch paper allegedly hacked phone of former British Prime Minister, bought private info on Queen herself

The News of the World scandal just grows and grows. It turns out Gordon Brown was "targeted for a period of more than 10 years," according to The Independent:

Journalists from across News International repeatedly targeted the former prime minister Gordon Brown, attempting to access his voicemail and obtaining information from his bank account, his legal file as well as his family's medical records.

There is also evidence that a private investigator used a serving police officer to trawl the police national computer for information about him.

That investigator also targeted another Labour MP who was the subject of hostile inquiries by the News of the World, but it has not confirmed whether News International was specifically involved in trawling police computers for information on Brown.

Separately, Brown's tax paperwork was taken from his accountant's office apparently by hacking into the firm's computer. This was passed to another newspaper.

As the article also states, it's not just News of the World involved in the spying; Murdoch's flagship publication The Times is also implicated.

Then there's Murdoch's alleged efforts to spy on the Queen herself:

Rupert Murdoch's now defunct News of the World tabloid allegedly paid British royal protection officers for details about Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family, reports said Monday.

An internal inquiry at News International, the British newspaper arm of Murdoch's empire, found emails that included requests by a reporter for money to pay police in the royal protection branch, the BBC and other media said.

Note: This story is being positioned as a "competitive advantage" situation; they did it to get juicy scoops. But spying on politicians is best used for leverage, generally speaking. So what are the implications of something like this?

Senior Labour figures also strongly suspect that a news organisation broke the law to obtain the emails that led to the resignation in April 2009 of Brown's close aide Damian McBride. The emails, which disclosed a scheme to smear Tory MPs, had been exchanged between McBride and a Labour party activist, Derek Draper. The Labour figures believe that the emails were hacked from Draper's computer and that their contents were then sent to the political blogger Guido Fawkes, whose stories were then followed by Fleet Street.

It doesn't prove the kind of wrong-doing I mentioned, but it sure suggests that there are possibilities that should be explored.

GP

NOTE FROM JOHN: If a Democrat who owned one of the top TV "news" networks in the states pulled something like this, there would be congressional hearings like you've never seen before.  After all, how do we know he didn't try the same thing to our politicians here in the states?