And a different piece of clarification
The issue is not limited to the News of the World
The Information Commissioner has documented in his What Price Privacy? series that the practice of hacking is likely to be endemic. He reported that the invoice trail indicated that the few private investigators he had investigated had delivered "services" to the following tabloid newspapers:
Daily/Sunday Mail had paid for 1,218 investigations to be undertaken by private investigators on behalf of up to 91 different journalists. The Daily/Sunday Mirror ordered 824 investigations on behalf of up to 70 journalists. The Sunday People ordered 802 investigations involving up to 50 journalists, and the News of the World (the paper of current interest) had ordered 228 transactions of up to 33 journalists.
The evidence above suggests there were large number of invasions of privacy by hacking and the News of the World are not the only culprits. Any ministerial attempt to limit any inquiry to the Murdoch empire is an attempt to limit the scope of any inquiry.
Courtesy of
http://amberhawk.typepad.com/amberhawk/ via
http://www.theregister.co.uk