Phone hacking made me think, says Sienna

Phone hacking made me think

The actress said she turned on her family and friends as her paranoia reached crisis levels not knowing her phone had been hacked – but then felt “terrible” after falsely accusing them. Her family had argued and “accused each other”, she told the Leveson inquiry.

With her sister Savannah and mother Jo watching, Miller, 29, said: “There was one particular very private piece of information that four people knew about. I had been very careful and only told my mother, my sister and two of my closest friends.

“It wasn’t just me accusing people, it was my mother accusing people. Nobody could understand how this information was coming up and so everybody was very upset and confused and felt violated.”

She told how she was spat at and chased down dark streets at midnight by paparazzi photographers.
She said they would “go to any lengths” to provoke a reaction and get a dramatic image they could sell to the tabloid newspapers.

She said: “It’s really terrifying. I would often find myself – I was 21 – at midnight running down a dark street on my own with 10 big men chasing me. If you take away the cameras, you have got a picture of men chasing a woman.”

She added: “It made it very difficult to leave the house. I felt constantly scared … I felt very violated and very paranoid and anxious, constantly.”

She explained: “The [paparazzi’s] incentive is to get as strong a reaction as possible. They seem to go to any lengths to try and upset you, which is really difficult to deal with.”

Miller, whose decision to pursue legal action against the News of the World over hacking opened the door to action from other victims such as the family of Milly Dowler, said: “I hope that some form of change comes to our media.

“There are very respectable and fantastic journalists in this country and they’re all bracketed under the same name of the press.”

The actress received £100,000 compensation plus legal costs from the News of the World in May after it accepted unconditional liability for hacking her phone.

The paper admitted “misuse of private information, breach of confidence, publication of articles derived from voicemail hacking and a course of conduct of harassment over a period of 12 months”, her barrister said in court at the time.

This afternoon Harry Potter author JK Rowling was due to talk about the “very real corrosive effect” press “hounding” had had on her three children.

Rowling, 46, makes great efforts to protect her privacy and has pursued legal action against the Big Pictures photo agency after a picture of a “special family moment” was published in the Daily Express.

Photographers and press have camped outside her home in Scotland, its address has been publicly identified, her children have had notes placed in their school bags and they have been pictured on holiday, her barrister David Sherborne said last week.

Today’s hearing began with secret testimony from an unnamed man referred to as “HJK”, whose phone was allegedly hacked by the News of the World in 2006 after he began a relationship with a well-known figure.

The story never made the headlines but the man was said to have suffered a “terrible experience”.

Computer hacking suspect is bailed

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The first person to be arrested in connection with claims of computer hacking by private investigators working for News International has been released on bail.

The 52-year-old man was detained under the Met Police’s Operation Tuleta, which runs alongside the Operation Weeting probe into phone-hacking.

The suspect, who was arrested in Milton Keynes on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences, was later bailed to return to a London police station in early December, police said.

A police spokesman said: “Operation Tuleta is investigating a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy, received by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) since January 2011, which fell outside the remit of Operation Weeting, including computer hacking.”

Tuleta was launched over the summer after a “scoping exercise” into allegations surrounding the use of private detectives.

Officers working on the investigation have been reporting to deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, who heads the inquiry into mobile phone interceptions at the now-defunct News of the World.

Scotland Yard’s phone-hacking squad is working its way through 300 million emails from News International.

Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe says police have already spent up to £3 million on salaries, with officers speaking to 1,800 of 6,000 potential victims. A total of 120 officers and staff are now working on the entire investigation after 1,800 people came forward to express fears that they may have been hacked.

Jamie Pyatt, 48, became the first Sun journalist to be arrested earlier this month as part of Operation Elveden, an investigation into illegal payments to police.

Other suspects include former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, ex-Downing Street communications chief Andy Coulson and the Sunday tabloid’s former royal editor Clive Goodman.