Data watchdog joins the NOTW posse

THE UK DATA WATCHDOG, the Information Commissioners Office is investigating activities at Sunday tabloid rag News of the World publisher News International.

The newspaper, which was published for the last time this weekend, has been accused of a range of crimes from snooping the phone records of 9/11 victims to deleting voicemails belonging to missing teenagers and bribing police officers for information, and now its parent company could be censured.

According to a report at Reuters, the UK government's Department of Culture, Media and Sport is behind the investigation and is about to ask the ICO to assess whether the police-bribing phone hacker News International is a nice enough company to buy up the UK satellite broadcaster Bskyb.

Ironically, Reuters was watching Bskyb when it heard the news straight from treasury minister Danny Alexander's mouth.

"Given the vast weight of responses that has come into the consultation the culture secretary is going to have to take a considerable amount of time to consider all those things," he told Sky News.

"It is right in the light of that and all the developing issues (that) Ofcom have the opportunity to come forward with fresh advice. Given that the legal responsibility for many of these things rests with Ofcom as the regulator, it is important that in making any decision that the culture secretary has the full and most up to date range of information before him in carrying out that function." µ