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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

#101

Post by bb010g »

mellosouls wrote: post #52
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".

Which I clearly referred to with "free tier version of Slack". What's the complaint here? Update: you've edited the parent since I responded to it. Your original comment was something like "it's not free, part of it is free" Still no idea what you're moaning about tho...

I think "freeware" is a clearer term, vs. the overloaded "free software".

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

#102

Post by Avamander »

kees99 wrote: post #80
Avamander wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't care and it doesn't matter what the FSF thinks, it's human language and they can't dictate how that works.

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

#103

Post by sky_rw »

toyg wrote: post #95
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…

Verba volant, scripta manent. Ancient Latins already knew the score. A lot of people initially refused to use emails in the ‘90s because they (rightly) perceived it as something written down and hence likely to be used to hold them to account - only people who grew up with IM have a more “disposable” view of electronic text. I can assure you that any manager or owner on the planet, at some point or another, has a con…

Similarly, I have several friends working on wall street who flat out refuse to discuss anything related to a stock over email. Every discussion with them no matter how trivial is on the phone.

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

#104

Post by jacques_chester »

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…

> 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 those disagreements are recorded, they will be used against them.

There's an existing mechanism in Parliamentary systems: cabinet confidentiality. All papers, records, minutes etc associated with the cabinet are held in high secrecy until a long period of time has passed. Australia holds them for 30 years unless they are otherwise active records.

It does as you say: allows ministers to talk openly amongst themselves in the highest governing body. So long as leaks are rare, it's an effective mechanism.

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

#105

Post by pbhjpbhj »

timthorn wrote: post #70
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear he didn't create the show, he's one of its stars.

The show was a successful transition to television of the Radio 4 classic, "The News Quiz"

I've never paired them, curiously.

The News Quiz is still a R4 show so transition would perhaps be the wrong word. Extension, assuming they have the same source as you imply with your comment.

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

#106

Post by pbhjpbhj »

billme wrote: post #29
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link for that? I often get ask questions about secure messaging, and I always have a hard time giving anything better than "it depends".

—————————— UK example reference: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/20/uk_conservatives_br... —————————— EU example reference: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/24/21150918/european-commiss... —————————— US example drafted by NSA: https://media.defense.gov/2020/Apr/24/2002288652/-1/-1/0/CSI... * Note this document is for public release. If you dig around you will find references to deploy US Special Forces even usin…

>US Special Forces even using Signal for official communications within combat zones //

Do they have some other systems for using Signal on, they can't use it on regular mobile phones without being tracked by base-stations, surely?

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

#107

Post by solution882 »

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…

The real solution is to dilute political power further not by eliminating it but expanding it.

There’s game theory to back up the idea of a balancing act by making everyone police.

Personally I’d prefer expansion of representatives (in the US, but it’s not too hard to translate to UK) and/or judiciary.

In the case of the judiciary, technology could be applied transparently via open source models of building case management, looking for patterns, weighting their correctness by social means....

But of course we’ll keep wanking memes from ancient history

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

#109

Post by lowdose »

sky_rw wrote: post #103
toyg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verba volant, scripta manent. Ancient Latins already knew the score. A lot of people initially refused to use emails in the ‘90s because they (rightly) perceived it as something written down and hence likely to be used to hold them to account - only people who grew up with IM have a more “disposable” view of electronic text. I can assure you that any manager or owner on the planet, at some point or another, has a con…

Similarly, I have several friends working on wall street who flat out refuse to discuss anything related to a stock over email. Every discussion with them no matter how trivial is on the phone.

No paper trail, no investigation.

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

#110

Post by makomk »

Jestar342 wrote: post #34
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…

> For an arbitrary example, look at the Boeing 737 max. There were some internal emails claiming that the system which turned out not to be safe wasn’t safe (the problem with these was probably that they didn’t seem to make their way up to anyone who could change the decision), and probably the fallout from them will be worse than if there were no such emails and Boeing just appeared to not have considered the possib…

It might be a good demonstration of that if the engineers had spotted the safety problem. As far as anyone can tell, they didn't - the press took some internal e-mails worrying about other safety problems which turned out not to actually matter, spun them as proof that their employees knew that the 737 Max was unsafe, and confused people like the commented you're replying to into thinking the problem was actually spotted internally. To give some idea about how overblown this was, the really juicy-sounding email comments were about problems with the simulator, not the actual plane. The fact that Boeing had a culture where people could speak their mind and those comments were recorded left us all less informed.
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