Paper hacked e-mails, says Sienna Miller

Actress Sienna Miller said yesterday her e-mails were hacked by a private detective for the News of the World, a dramatic new twist at an inquiry into Britain’s phone-hacking scandal. It is the first time the inquiry has heard evidence that emails were hacked as well as voicemails, and came shortly after Scotland Yard said they had made their first arrest in a computer hacking probe linked to the paper. Miller, the ex-girlfriend of Hollywood star Jude Law, said when the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World paid her damages earlier this year she finally saw the notes of its private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. “All my telephone numbers, the three that I changed in three months, my access numbers, PIN mumbers, my password for my e-mail that was actually used to later hack my e-mail in 2008 was on these notes,” Miller told the judge-led inquiry at London’s Royal Courts of Justice. “A number of my friends, I think about 10 numbers in total, so there was just this web of surveillance which obviously makes it very easy to understand how they were getting all of this information.” “Everyone close to me was being monitored and electronically listened to.” Mulcaire was jailed for phone-hacking in 2007. Miller, who starred with Law in Alfie, was one of the first British celebrities to take action against the News of the World for phone-hacking. She said she became “intensely paranoid” and mistakenly accused family and friends of betraying her when information about her appeared in the press that had actually been hacked. “I felt I was living in some sort of video game,” Miller, her long blonde hair hanging loose over a blue dress. “I accused my family and people who would never dream of selling stories... I feel terrible that I would even consider accusing people of betraying me like that, especially people who would rather die than betray me. World motorsport chief Max Mosley was also due to give evidence yesterday. Mosley won damages in privacy cases in Britain and France from the News of the World tabloid after it published photographs of him in a sadomasochistic orgy. Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry in July after it emerged the paper had also targeted murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, a revelation that forced Murdoch to shut the tabloid down. Dowler’s parents and the mother and father of missing British girl Madeleine McCann have given emotional testimony to the inquiry this week about the effects of media intrusion. “Notting Hill” actor Hugh Grant and British comedian Steve Coogan, best known for his portrayal of spoof chat-show host Alan Partridge, have also given evidence. Sienna Miller said she had been placed under a “web of surveillance” by the tabloid newspaper which listened into her messages and read e-mails, prompting her to accuse family and friends of leaking stories to the press.She had felt violated by the constant coverage of intimate details of her private life in the press. “(There was) this breeding of mistrust amongst all of us. Nobody could understand how this information was coming out...It was impossible to lead any kind of normal life,” Miller said.Miller’s private life and particularly her romantic liaisons have long been staple fodder for the tabloid press.“I wanted to understand the extent of the information that they had on me,” she said of the court case. “I wanted to know who knew, who had access to my telephone numbers, who had been listening to me ... I wanted to get to the bottom of it.”Miller said she had been spat at and abused by paparazzi seeking a good reaction shot. She described in detail how she had been terrified by the attention, how photographers drove dangerously to get a picture, making her feel that she would be safer to stay at home.“I would often find myself -- I was 21 -- at midnight running down a dark street on my own with 10 big men chasing me,” she said. “And the fact that they had cameras in their hand meant that that was legal, but if you take away the cameras, what have you got? “You’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman. And obviously that’s a very intimidating situation to be in.”