Three and a half years after the launch of the Operation Weeting probe into hacking at the News of the World nearly 100 UK police officers are still investigating journalists.
Met Police statistics quoted by Inforrm (The International Forum for Responsible Media) show that 46 police officers are still investigating hacking and a further 53 are looking into payments by journalists to police and other public officials.
In addition to Operations Weeting, Elveden (payments) and Tuleta (computer hacking), police have since launched a further probe into allegations of hacking at Trinity Mirror (Operation Golding).
According to Martin Hickman, writing on the Inform blog, there are ten ongoing inquiries into illegal data-gathering alone including operations Sabinas, Carrizo and Kerville into "computer misuse" offences.
Press Gazette estimates that at least 63 journalists have been arrested and/or summonsed to appear in court.
The total cost so far of the investigations is estimated to be £32.7m.
Hickman reports that ten inquiries were confirmed at a police briefing for reporters covering the hacking trial:
Hacking: Operations Weeting and Pinetree (News of the World) and Golding (Trinity Mirror)
Computer misuse: Sabinas, Carrizo and Kerville
Computer hacking: Tuleta and Kalmyk
Corruption of public officials: Elvedon
Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice: Sacha
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