Tomorrow's Business Today
The hacking of the hacks
Props to FT editor Roula Khalaf, who has had her phone hacked by clients of NSO, an Israeli spyware company behind scary-sounding surveillance tool Pegasus.
Khalaf is one of 180 hacks around the world singled out for the treatment, but the only one famous enough to merit a mention high up in The Guardian piece on the hacking.
(Others honourably name-checked further down include US hacks Brad Hope and Tom Wright.)
Since the NSO sells to governments and is mostly pursuing corruption investigations far away, it isn’t surprising there is only one UK editor on the list.
Still, several amusing possibilities present themselves, including the irritated editors of The Times and The Telegraph demanding to know why they weren’t considered important enough to hack.
“I’ve got Boris Johnson’s phone number!” they screech. “So has everyone,” comes the reply.
It will be interesting to see how News UK in particular report and comment on this news.
So far, The Times has done it dead straight, and omitted to mention that its tabloid brothers have rather a lot of previous when it comes to phone hacking.
Now, if you were, say, Hugh Grant, wouldn’t you be tempted to get in touch with NSO and pay them to hack the phones of the top ten executives at The Sun?
Would the execs sue? And if they did, is there anyone outside of that organisation who wouldn’t think it was hilarious?
Press release of the day
More than half of staff think their work has improved thanks to more flexibility from their employer, says this from Theta Global Advisors.
But a quarter report that their employers still don’t trust them to work from home.
Chris Biggs says: “Attitudes to the future of work have affirmatively shifted, and to ensure people are at their happiest and most productive, flexibility is needed in both where and when they work.”
The issue of the moment.
