Phone Hacking: Over The Eight

Let's hope the News Corp phone hacking scandal isn't laid to rest with the pay-offs/pay-outs to these eight people.
Chris Bryant MP and Brian Paddick believe their phones were hacked by the Murdoch press - MPs Simon Hughes and Nick Brown were spied on before being outed - how many other gay men have been outed or were blackmailed into coming out ("So brave..." etc etc) through phone hacking?

Phone Hacking: An Aid To Outing?

Nick Brown MP, former Labour chief whip, is quoted in The Independent today as saying he feels certain his telephone landline was being crudely tapped around the time he was outed by The News Of The World in 1998.
"I picked up a landline telephone very quickly… to make another call straight away.
“And the line clicked and then I heard my last conversation played back to me, which was quite eerie. I got on to British Telecom straight away… They said the line showed every signs of having been intercepted manually, not through scanners. It was an amateurish attempt involving the physical intervention of the line with a recording device.”
Interesting - did illegal phone taps and hacking play a part in the outing of other public figures by the tabloids, such as Stephen Gately's in The Sun back when Andy Coulson was editor in 1999?
Of course, the Murdoch press don't need to tap gay mens' phones.
As Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes found out in 2006, they can just go through your bins, dig out an old phone bill and blackmail you by saying they have proof you phoned a gay chat line.