A former high-level News Corp. editor was arrested on Thursday, the ninth since January in the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking s...

A former high-level News Corp. editor was arrested on Thursday, the ninth since January in the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal that is growing by the day.

British news outlets identified the man as former News of the World executive editor Neil Wallis, who served as the paper’s deputy editor and executive editor from 2003 to 2009, when the bulk of the hacking incidents occurred.

The bust came as the lead attorney for the News Corp.’s British newspaper subsidiary suddenly quit after 26 years. Tom Crone was responsible for vetting stories in The News of the World and the Sun, each of which stands accused of publishing reports based on illegally obtained information.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, asked Google and the nation’s major wireless telephone providers to discuss with her cell phone security, her spokesman told the Washington Post.

“We look at this as an opportunity to gain information that will help us as we decide whether or not new regulations are needed for Americans’ personally identifiable information,” spokesman Ken Johnson told the Post. “The bottom line is that we’re trying to balance the need to remain innovative with the need to protect privacy — and that cuts to the heart of the issue.”

Bono Mack is the second Republican, after House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.), to publicly ask for an investigation into phone hacking. King on Wednesday asked the Justice Department to look into News Corp.’s actions in the U.S. in light of the scandal. Several Senate Democrats have done the same.