The Guardian posted this headline at 21:00 BST. The headline says it all.
News International ordered mass deletion of emails nine times
Lawyers for firm contracted to NI said it deleted emails on nine occasions since May 2010: there was 'nothing abnormal'
h/t to back2basics in Brit's comment line and to Eric's diaries for bringing the comment to attention. I add the fact that way in the end, they took note of NYT's Friday afternoon scoop on the way NI forced Whorbustel, sorry Harbottle&Lewis, to lie about emails which it took another solicitor 3 to 5 minutes to declare obvious criminal behavior, e.g. payoffs to Scotland Yard. Below the fold, the technical language which needs Kossian expert translation and British legal interpretation to decide: End run or Enron?
In February 2011, emails were deleted in an older version of email software. Finally, in July 2011 HCL helped delete emails from the live system as relocation errors had occurred during migration from one system to the other
snip
News International sources indicated that the email deletions were part of sensible housekeeping of an email system that had been unstable, and at one point had gone down for three days. The company says it has a good working relationship with police investigating the hacking crisis, although last month it emerged that Scotland Yard investigators were unhappy about the scale of the deletions.
I have a push thesend button deadline for 24:00 European Central Time, so I cannot do a fuller search for earlier references. Sorry if I have replicated an earlier diary.