The government is planning to close a loophole in the law that makes it legal to hack into someone else's voicemail messages if they have already been listened to by the owner.
The police startled the culture select committee by revealing the loophole under section 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
The committee pointed out that the loophole meant the hacking of messages that had already been opened was not a criminal offence and the only action the victim could take was to pursue a breach of privacy issue. Downing Street sources said the Home Office would look at how quickly the loophole could be closed.
The Metropolitan police said the loophole was a key reason why it could not reopen its inquiry into the extent of phone hacking by News of the World staff.
The ministerial moves came as the Conservative chairman of the committee defended its report into press standards in the face of furious criticism from the NoW's publisher, News International.
John Whittingdale told the BBC: "We've now discovered that actually the extent of the phone hacking went very wide indeed. We'll probably never know quite how many, but the police have already now said that it was 91 individual numbers."
The report accused executives at News International of "obfuscation" and "collective amnesia" over allegations of widespread phone hacking at the paper. It said it was inconceivable that Clive Goodman, the paper's former royal editor, was the only person engaged in the practice.
News Source:-http://www.guardian.co.uk/