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UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

private-eye.co.uk

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Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#71

Post by DanBC »

afandian wrote: post #2

For those unfamiliar, Private Eve is an excellent magazine with a long history. It takes a humourous but serious investgative look at UK politics, business etc looking at eg corruption and double standards. With cartoons and iconic front page puns. And for the large part it avoided the pitfalls of moving online. Current issue: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/current-issue

Private Eye is very good, but they don't always get it right.

> Even when an error does not end up in the law courts, it can still prove embarrassing. The magazine was at the forefront of challenging the MMR triple vaccine - devoting a special-edition pamphlet to the subject. A defiant Hislop insists that the Eye was right to raise the questions it did and to defend the reputation of Andrew Wakefield, the controversial doctor who first suggested there might be a link between MMR, autism and bowel disease - a theory ruled out by the latest comprehensive review of evidence. "There's nothing there that I don't think is right. We came into the story about the hounding of Wakefield and the idea that he wasn't a bona fide doctor, who'd done a huge amount of good looking after these children - the parents certainly bear witness to that. All his stuff beforehand was peer-reviewed and no one said, 'This man's a lunatic' about the link between bowel disease and autism. The work he's still doing is still perfectly OK. I don't accept the claim, 'You added to a climate of hysteria, which means herd immunity will go down and therefore it's all your fault.' I think the questions we asked at the time were acceptable to ask."

That leaflet was published in 2002, when the science was pretty clear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123186/

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#72

Post by strogonoff »

rewoi wrote: post #64
dan-robertson wrote: post #17

I’m in two minds about this. I think it’s pretty sleazy to be using signal to evade record keeping requirements. I also think it’s important to have transparency into things governments do. But I also worry that such requirements can lead to worse results. Generally in a well run organisation, you want people to be able to speak their mind and disagree about things, but if the organisation makes a bad decision and th…

British government has transparency problem at much higher level. There is official report from investigation of rape gangs. It includes almost 100k child rape victims in many cities over 3 decades. Government refuses to release it, and pretends this abuse does not exists.

For anyone wondering what this is about, see Rotherham investigation[0]. It’s a fairly damning read.

I can’t remember the figures as far victim counts (read this a long time ago and am not eager for a refresher), any number would be too big frankly.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#73

Post by Avamander »

kees99 wrote: post #51
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are conflating free software and Free software.

I don't think capitalization matters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software In addition to not being free, Slack is also not software. It's a service. Sure, there's some software involved in making that service tick (mostly proprietary), as well as some limited gratis access ("free tier") being offered, but that doesn't magically transform that service into "free software".

A reasonable person would assume "without cost" until proven otherwise when reading "free software".

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#74

Post by pwc »

tomhoward wrote: post #30

Some points to consider: - From the article: “Starting in late 2004, before the FOIA came into force in early 2005, Downing Street implemented an automatic 90-day deletion of emails aside from those specifically selected by civil servants as relevant for storage in the National Archives” - Since the invention of the telephone, it's never been an expectation that transcripts of telephone calls between MPs or officials…

> At least according to FOI laws I'm vaguely familiar with (in Australia), an FOI request can only be made for an item of information that is known to exist. People can't go on "fishing expeditions" for, say, all communications between nominated people over a nominated period of time.

Interestingly I don't think this is 100% true - under (for example) the federal FOI Act I think a request framed as asking for "email sent on government systems between Alice and Bob in the last six months" would be facially valid, if Alice and Bob were civil servants (although of course exemptions may apply to individual emails).

Here's an (Australian) FOI request that is similar in spirit to your example:

https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/philip_gaetjens_the_l...

which asks for "any emails contained in all of Philip Gaetjens’ outlook items (including deleted items) that contain any of the following terms (in the body of an email and/or in the addressee fields of an email): “liberal.org.au” or “ipa.org.au”", and the department deemed that a valid request. (Philip Gaetjens is a senior civil servant, the Liberals are a political party and the IPA is a right-leaning think tank; it's reasonable to infer that the fishing here is for evidence of a link between the civil service and a particular side of politics.)

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#75

Post by iguy »

Sevaris wrote: post #63
iguy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't only want accountability, we also want good decisions, and good advice, even on delicate topics. IMO this is quite a difficult topic. Suppose you are concerned that some variants of a policy you're thinking about may be legal or illegal. There is a pretty large gray area. You could corner the relevant legal mind after lunch, and ask his opinion. Then there is no recording, only your memory. Or you could emai…

I'm sorry, but if you require the deletion of what you said to protect yourself from the people, then you shouldn't be in a position of power. > and stating bluntly what you really mean (and what you are concerned about) In the end, people aren't judged for this. They're judged for the actions that they take, and then communications like this are used for context. If your decision is so bad that they had to make a FO…

> They're judged for the actions that they take

I wish that were true, but it more often seems they're judged by the worst dirt that can be made to stick. And they know it.

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#76

Post by tialaramex »

amiga_500 wrote: post #54
ballooney wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly urge UK-base HNers to subscribe. It is one of the few national publications still doing proper long-term investigative journalism into local government (in a way that local papers haven’t had the resources to do for years) and usually signals important stories before the main papers pick them up, especially wrt stories about the rest of the news media. Many people stuck in large media orgs leak to the Eye…

Agreed. I think their level of investigation is peerless. They go where others fear to tread. They ruffle more feathers in every single edition than the FT does in a year. I can't think of any other UK publication that comes close.

It's an overall excellent and very dense UK-specific read (~40 pages of editorial, cartoons and letters every fortnight). Several stories broken by Private Eye have ended up featuring on Hacker News much later too such as Horizon - an IT system for the UK's Post Office which somehow executives managed to persuade the courts was infallible, so if a bug in Horizon said your Post Office ought to have £10k of cash that it didn't you (the "Postmaster" of that office, typically a small local store owner making a little bit of extra money offering this vital service) might literally go to prison for stealing this money that never even existed.

It does have its own unique culture you'd need to spin up on to really grok what's going on. For example it just calls the Queen "Brenda", and various government agencies get more apposite names like the "Fundamentally Supine Agency". And there are a lot of running jokes after existing for so long.

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#77

Post by el_nino »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #56
waterhouse wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Should" for us, yes. But consider the perspective of the company—and specifically its lawyers; their takeaway may be "This stuff being in writing made things worse in court, therefore we'll instruct our employees not to put this stuff in writing." Though I would guess that having an explicit policy of "don't write down any safety concerns" would do badly in court as well. I suspect any real such policy would have to…

That’s already known. It’s why mingling at golf clubs and galas and charity events is important and why clustering in cities is useful. Generally, you can trust conversations you have in person to not be recorded and maintain plausible deniability.

Many companies and worse, public institutions around the world are moving to solidify the destruction of evidence with data retention policies. They may automatically delete any email older than 1 or 2 years, every instant message sent via corporate channels in 30 days, etc. as a "disk-space saving measure". Including backups! Anyone can see through that explanation since any CIO claiming cost savings come from the few tens of GB of archived Office Communicator chats should be politely invited behind the barn for a dramatic reenactment of an age old saying.

Scandals like Boeing's and others that shook trust in public institutions, most of which are required by law to make any such material available to citizens, just convinced them that proactive destruction of evidence is the way to go. This is not punishable by law. And when the requests for data do come in all the have to do is delay the process until the totally legitimate automatic policy kicks in and removes the last shred of evidence.

At this point only whistle blowers diligently collecting all the data before it's destroyed could still help in any way but this comes at great personal risk. And when tools like Signal are involved good luck with that, one would have to be part of every conversation.

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#78

Post by enitihas »

strogonoff wrote: post #72
rewoi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

British government has transparency problem at much higher level. There is official report from investigation of rape gangs. It includes almost 100k child rape victims in many cities over 3 decades. Government refuses to release it, and pretends this abuse does not exists.

For anyone wondering what this is about, see Rotherham investigation[0]. It’s a fairly damning read. I can’t remember the figures as far victim counts (read this a long time ago and am not eager for a refresher), any number would be too big frankly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

It is a very damning read. Quoting just one part

"... had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men. ... The failure to address the abuse was attributed to a combination of factors revolving around race, class and gender—contemptuous and sexist attitudes toward the mostly working-class victims; fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations; the Labour council's reluctance to challenge a Labour-voting ethnic minority; lack of a child-centred focus;"

So the council didn't take any action to avoid "allegations of racism and damage community relations". This makes no sense. What did the council think will happen when the news breaks out. Won't it increase racial bias by leaps and bounds. And to just avoid the allegations of racism, the council was willing to let this continue? How do such people sleep at night.

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#79

Post by amiga_500 »

tialaramex wrote: post #76
amiga_500 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think their level of investigation is peerless. They go where others fear to tread. They ruffle more feathers in every single edition than the FT does in a year. I can't think of any other UK publication that comes close.

It's an overall excellent and very dense UK-specific read (~40 pages of editorial, cartoons and letters every fortnight). Several stories broken by Private Eye have ended up featuring on Hacker News much later too such as Horizon - an IT system for the UK's Post Office which somehow executives managed to persuade the courts was infallible, so if a bug in Horizon said your Post Office ought to have £10k of cash that i…

It's basically what the press looks like when they are doing their job. They are privately owned and on a mission to tell the truth, not to make as much money as possible.

Hislop and before him Cook are actual real people trying to do something good instead of just attempting to get rich for the sake of it before dropping dead.

There are lots of in jokes and also "code phrases", such as "tired and emotional" == drunk, more here [1].

I used to subscribe to it but cancelled it after I left the UK.

The UK press are an absolute disaster. Most are partisan, including:

Telegraph: torygraph Daily mail: torygraph FT: bankers times Guardian: with you until you need actual help then it's back to mi5 Sun/Times: Murdoch incorporated

Private eye is literally carry everything on their shoulders. There is nothing else.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_themes_and_in-jokes_...

Re: UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

#80

Post by kees99 »

Avamander wrote: post #73
kees99 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think capitalization matters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software In addition to not being free, Slack is also not software. It's a service. Sure, there's some software involved in making that service tick (mostly proprietary), as well as some limited gratis access ("free tier") being offered, but that doesn't magically transform that service into "free software".

A reasonable person would assume "without cost" until proven otherwise when reading "free software".

Free Software Foundation appear to disagree with your definition [1], while OED lists absence of monetary charge as only one of necessary characteristics of "free software" [2]

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/free-sof...

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