Brooks's involvement in ordering a general deletion of emails while chief executive of News International was revealed during the criminal phone-hacking trial in 2013 in which she was acquitted of all charges.
However, several reporters also acquitted of offering illegal payments to public officials are still waiting to hear whether they will be offered their jobs back, and the final criminal phone-hacking trial involving a former NoW journalist – deputy editor Neil Wallis – is still ongoing in London.
They included tougher penalties and a law requiring registration for all SIM cards, which would make it easier to track the criminals' phone calls.
So-called "courier fraud" targets elderly people and involves criminals phoning victims pretending to be from an authority to extract pin details.
These days the police often use phone jammers when carrying out drug raids to disable the criminals' phones.
No, your fingers are safe as long as the criminal knows the phone works.
In Smith v Maryland the Supreme Court upheld the warrantless collection of a criminal suspect's phone records.
Neither Mr. Lanham nor the federal public defender representing Mr. Reilly in the criminal case returned phone calls seeking comment.
More than 100 reporters, editors, investigators, executives and public officials have been implicated in wrongdoing by police units investigating accusations of criminal activity, including phone intercepts and bribery.
At the same time the police are conducting their own interwoven criminal inquiries into phone hacking, e-mail hacking and corruption.
Senior officers at Scotland Yard believe they have new evidence strong enough to form the basis for criminal charges on phone hacking.
