Gordon Brown was hacked too

A day after press baron Rupert Murdoch jetted into London to oversee the demise of the top-selling tabloid News of the World after a stream of phone-hacking revelations, his News International media empire has struck another reef. “My son’s medical records were hacked, says Brown,” headlines the Daily Telegraph, which, along with much of the British press, has revealed that that not only tabloid The Sun, but also the prestige weekly The Sunday Times are alleged to have illegally obtained highly personal medical and financial information about ex-PM Gordon Brown and his family when he was Chancellor. “The most emotive claim relates to Mr Brown’s son, Fraser, diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 2006, soon after his birth,” the London daily explains. “His condition was disclosed on The Sun’s website in November 2006, when he was four months old.” The revelations also include that a person working for The Sunday Times posed as Mr Brown on six occasions to gain details from his bank account. “The revelations will also shift attention away from accusations of “hacking” mobile phone voicemail accounts and on to other, potentially illegal, practices known as “blagging”, getting information by trickery or deception,” the Telegraph notes. It is suggested that such techniques were used by The Sun to break the news that Browns’ first child, Jennifer, was dying of a brain haemorrhage – a story published the weekend before she died in 2002.