How did the NOTW get Milly Dowler's mobile phone number?

As readers will know from my last article I had an opinion of journalist that was low, of print journalists doubly so and tabloid ones quadripartitely so to a point that it could go no lower. I have now had to revise that and my opinion has dropped to depths I had hitherto thought impossible.

However a question sprang to mind which is ... how exactly did the people at or working for the News of the World get hold of Milly Dowler's mobile phone number in order to hack it? After all their families home phone number was ex directory and the NOTW got hold of hold of that by unlawful means.

So how did they get it?

From the family? Well, they couldn't get the families home number so I really doubt that they could of got it from the family.

Friends of Milly? Well how many would they have had to have asked to get the number, and if but one friend asked was concerned, that would have blown the operation out of the water so they would have had to have got lucky first time. Does anyone think they would have risked it?

The telephone companies? Well which one? The phone was a pay as you go mobile phone, need not have been registered, and the NOTW would not have known which provider to ask, so would have had to have worked their way through several.

So who then? Well... we do know one group of people who would have had the number and according to Rebecca Brookes in evidence to a parliamentary committee have form for selling information to journalists and that is the police. Seems to me to be the easiest most secure and least likely to backfire method available.

So the police have huge amounts to answer for and indeed this also explains why they have been hitherto completely lax and uninterested in investigating any further than they have been pushed. After all the investigation was and is bound to lead directly to them.

The story has now got much worse, with the Telegraph leading with a story that victims of the July the 7th bombing had their phones hacked as well as the family of the Soham murder victims Jessica Wells and Holy Chapman. (The comments above about how phone numbers were obtained also applies to these cases).

Just how disgusting can this get? Just how up to their necks in it are the police and is that why they have been dragged kicking and screaming to investigate? In fact you have to ask, how can we be sure the police are the right body to investigate?