Let me put a different slant on all this hacking nonsense.
If you go out tomorrow and leave your back door open and the house gets burgled who is to blame? Is it you for being so stupid as to leave your back door open, or is it the police for not being there when the robbery happened? To my mind it is your fault for not securing your property.
Now using the same analogy you have a mobile phone with voice mail, the voice mail is accessed from any other phone by dialling your number then entering a default password (1234 or 0000) because you haven’t had the gumption to change it to a secure number. Thus you have left your back door wide open. Now to me if anyone wants to listen to my voice mail all they will get is “I’ll be late” or “ring me back” etc. but to celebrities they leave an entire story on the phone.
This does not condone what has occurred any more than I forgive the burglar, but people must take responsibility for their own actions or stupidity. But since the last government came to power we have lived in a society of blame.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Rick, I’m afraid your argument resembles the girl accused of attracting rape because she wears a sun-top: “I accessed the voice-mails, Officer, because I could.”
Was it really that simple? I always think of hacking as some computer boffin toiling away for hours and hours looking at codes and then gaining access.
Your description is a bit like somebody walking past your front gate and nicking your post out of the letterbox!
I ‘ve not really followed all this – except to gaze open-mouthed at the utter stupidity of just about everyone involved. But I really cannot believe that everyone who’s had their phone or e-mails ‘hacked’ failed to put in some form of security.
Janus, I am not making excuses as I think the press are low life and deserve to be severely curtailed. I am saying that those hacked should take some of the blame for not ensuring their own security, as should the phone companies for not promoting phone security more. After all we get upset when our email has been attacked and that is worse than phone hacking as there is more data.
Soutie As for the easiness of access I understand from my IT boffin that all you have to do is phone a mobile, let it go through to answer phone then enter the pin to access your voice mail, most people (me included) have never set up a password for voice mail so it is in the default setting for pin numbers. If they want to hack my phone then fine, all they’ll get is “I’m at the station” “help I can’t get home” or other trivia.
The media have a lot to answer for over the years and they have become far too powerful, but hen they do reveal some of the short comings of our leaders which is good.