The Daily Mail spent an estimated £143,000 asking a private eye to make 1,728 potentially illegal requests to unearth phone numbers and addresses of public figures over a three-year period, including personal details of the Duchess of Cambridge and her sister Pippa Middleton.

Journalists at the newspaper asked for private information on average more than once a day, and occasionally asked for individual criminal record checks. Its reporters demanded roughly twice as many searches as was previously thought, according to research by ITV News.

Journalists from the Mail obtained the BT friends and family numbers of people of interest 90 times, at an average cost of about £336. Reporters obtained 1,285 ex-directory numbers at a cost of £65 a time. There were 20 requests to establish a person's address from their vehicle registration at an average cost of £150.
On three occasions, Whittamore's JJ Services was asked for an individual's criminal records to be checked against the police national computer, each at a cost of £500.

The Observer, owned by Guardian Media Group, publishers of the Guardian, made 201 requests for information from Whittamore at a cost of £13,270 between 2000 and 2003. This was about double the 103 previously counted by the information commissioner, and the new data says the Sunday paper made 182 requests for ex-directory numbers, asked for 18 mobile and landline numbers to be linked to people's addresses or other personal details and requested one "blag".

Obtaining such personal information is a breach of section 55 of the Data Protection Act, although there is a public interest defence. If anybody working in the public sector was paid money to supply information illegally, it could amount to an offence under the more serious 1906 Prevention of Corruption Act, for which there is no public interest defence. Whittamore himself pleaded guilty to breaches of the Data Protection Act in 2005 and received a two-year conditional discharge.

"Two soldiers posed holding a dead man's hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man's hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading "Zombie Hunter" next to other remains and took a picture."

No wonder the war campaign has hit the buffers. These over-sensitive people in management have no stomach for real war. Do you think the Taliban would show such "respect" to our brave troops? They sever heads live on TV. The people up top running operations must have forgotten what its like being in the relentless, pressure cauldron that we call war
- Michael AA, London, UK, 18/4/2012 18:52

Oh for Pete's sake - these soldier are fighting in a war - aren't they? So should they have pulled out their handkerchiefs and sobbed? Is that what the PC-ites want? To my knowlege, never has a war been fought where our soldiers have such constraining "rules of engagement" that often their lives at far greater risk. Now we are supposed to be outraged soldiers are happy an enemy, who was trying to blow up said soldiers, is dead? Do you think soldiers, in WWII, were unhappy with a successful mission. Might we find pictures of them smiling? Horrors!
- Maureen, MA, USA, 18/4/2012 13:06

Wow, even dead suicide-bombing terrorists are being rights now and their corpses need to be respected. IS THIS A WAR OR MORRIS DANCING! The moron blew himself up and killed other people. Who gives a damn about his feelings. Hopefully this picture will deter other would-be suicide bombers from going down this route and bringing shame to their families.
- Michael AA, London, UK, 18/4/2012 18:44

Those of you who have never fought in the military will not understand. When such terrorists bomb women and children and seem impossible to get into the 21st Century from the evil medieval times, When you have seen your comrades in arms slaughtered (as i havewhile serving in the RAF in South Yemem in the early 1960s by the illiterate people who really should be left to live their own lives in isolation from modern society until they ALL want, without exception, to better themselves. Soldiers are soldiers not policemen. .They are trained to kill and overcome and here we have them trying to make life much better for the Afghanis and they are rewarded with cowardly attacks. Spray all the Poppy/Opium fields with Agent orange and leave them behind high border fences to live the lives they seem to want.
- B J Deller, ratbag, 18/4/2012 14:40

Why? They aren't trained to be social workers, after all. Their job is to kill and not feel bad about it. It's what we pay soldiers for. It shouldn't come as a surprise if that desensitizes them, by normal social standards.

Doesn't make it any less shocking or disrespectful, though.

Why?