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UK government MPs are using Signal’s automatic deletion feature

private-eye.co.uk

31–40 of 123 posts

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

#31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So good in fact that the managing editor is usually the most sued person in the UK. Ian Hislop is a national treasure and his evidence to the select committee on press intrusion was both erudite and hilarious.

His TV panel show, "Have I Got News For You" is also wonderful. Just comedians, discussing and making jokes about the news, for something like 25 years now. And most of it is on YouTube.

Our PM was also a regular.

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

#32
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So good in fact that the managing editor is usually the most sued person in the UK. Ian Hislop is a national treasure and his evidence to the select committee on press intrusion was both erudite and hilarious.

His TV panel show, "Have I Got News For You" is also wonderful. Just comedians, discussing and making jokes about the news, for something like 25 years now. And most of it is on YouTube.

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

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

#33
post #29

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…

Thanks a lot.

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

#34

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 possibility of failure. This gives the message that one shouldn’t have these discussions through email because that gives the impression that known issues were ignored if they turn out to have mattered. But no one asked about the cases where people had raised concerns by email and they were corrected by redesigning things or where concerns were raised but deemed to not be significant and turned out not to be significant. It seems better to me for people to be able to voice disagreements.

I'm sorry, but what?! The fallout of the 737 max debacle is that the senior people didn't listen when the engineers raised concerns about safety. This is a solid example of why comms _should_ be recorded, and wholly _not_ the example of why they should not.

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

#35
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

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 so they can report that e.g. the Telegraph hasn’t been allowed to report on something that might damage the financial interests of its owners.

And it’s quite funny.

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

#36

I had a buddy a couple years ago who was a low level FOIA officer in the U.S. military. He was telling me that shortly after the Clinton email scandal there was a policy pushed on all his branch's computers that forced encryption to be turned on for all users. What that resulted in was basically a complete shutdown of email discovery for fulfilling FOIA requests. You go into Outlook, do a search, and if it's not in t…

Incompetence is what leads to doing nothing and scandals continuing to happen because people have access to information that exposes hypocrisy and wrongdoing that offends them. As this was a reaction to a scandal I'm going to say your buddy was on track, it was done intentionally in order to frustrate future discovery. (Not solely a conspiracy against FOIA particularly but that is one method used to reveal information)

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

#37

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…

More generally: anything that is made public, will be politicised.

I agree that it's a fair concern. Another recent example: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/07/foreign-off...

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

#38

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 problem with this example is that boing has skin in the game. The UK govt does not

Boeing is risking its own money and if they fail they will go bankrupt.

The UK government has an unlimited backstop in the form of tax increases.

Maximum transparency for maximum corruption

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

#39

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…

The guy at Boeing who couldn’t raise concerns about safety is currently under criminal investigation. The chilling effect comes from your joke about something at work becoming a punishable event. No one is blaming the single engineer for the MCAS problem but that didn’t stop him from requiring a lawyer
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