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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

#81

Post by fit2rule »

bencollier49 wrote: post #44
fit2rule wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree entirely. Government must be conducted openly and with critical review by the people being governed, always. All government business should be logged and available for audit for years after the fact. Otherwise, what we get is a totalitarian class society divided between 'those that know the secrets' and 'those that do not'.

So all conversations between politicians ought to be recorded. What about all conversation between government employees?

Yes. If you are performing a public duty, it must be done in open society. Anything less is corrupt by definition.

Secret meetings are the opposite of open society.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

o-__-o wrote: post #39
Jestar342 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by tialaramex »

laumars wrote: post #9

It’s “funny” how the U.K. government endorse signal for covering their tracks but want backdoors put in because other people can’t be trusted. Furthermore, it should be illegal for governments to use self-destructing messages.

When the government passed laws authorising itself to snoop on all Internet traffic, some MPs asked if there couldn't be an exception for them, since after all certainly they aren't terrorists or paedophiles...

The response (IIRC from Theresa May who was Home Secretary at the time) was that this would be technically impossible.

The reason of course is that although the law is written in a way that suggests the letter authorising interception looks like "Dear Tiny ISP, you are required to store all the data about Bill The Terrorist so we can investigate very important crimes, love, the Home Secretary XX" the actual letters go like this: "Dear 10Tb/s Internet interchange, you are required to store literally everything, so that we can investigate whatever we want, love, the Home Secretary XX".

You could easily never issue letters requesting data for an individual MP, but if you never even intended to name individuals anyway then that's obviously not going to work...

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

#84

Post by elliekelly »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #37
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…

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...

Everything is politicized at the moment. It reminds me of the scene in VEEP where the politicians have to eat with their hands because “utensils are too political.” It’s absurd but I think it’s a symptom of larger issues and avoiding transparency won’t stop the divisive politics.

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

#85

Post by tomhoward »

pwc wrote: post #74
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…

Thanks for expanding on that (I avoided digging into it for brevity and as I was time-constrained).

That aligns with my understanding, that there must be an explicit piece of information you’re looking for or occurrence you’re looking for evidence of, rather than just seeking to dragnet-fish all correspondence to see what’s there.

Anyway, it makes sense to me that messenger app conversations are considered ephemeral like phonecalls and can just naturally disappear, whereas more formal material like meeting minutes, official written correspondence, contracts and public service documents are kept on record and made subject to FOI.

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

#86

Post by goatinaboat »

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.

We have a media who will not give anyone the benefit of the doubt and actively seek to take sentences out of context to whip up controversy and get a few more clicks from the baying public.

I fully agree about transparency in government, but it was the public that decided that candid conversations were fair game for attacking not just politicians and officials, but anyone.

There are at least partial solutions such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule but they rely on the good faith of the attendees, that's not something you can take for granted when tabloid journalists are present.

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

#87

Post by t0mas88 »

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…

In the Netherlands (probably more similar laws compared to the UK due to EU influence) you can make a request for all written communications regarding a specific decision by a government agency. That would include the emails about it.

I think it's rather sleazy of the UK government to implement a 90 day removal procedure, knowing that they can delay answering a request for longer than that. Totally not in the spirit of the FOI laws.

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

#88

Post by cheschire »

clort wrote: post #36
cheschire wrote: post #23

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 informatio…

It was done near a scandal, but not necessarily in reaction to one. Correlation is not causation.

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

#89

Post by robin_reala »

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…

Also in two minds, having worked in the civil service before. There was a slight panic when it became understood that unpaid Slack didn’t actually delete messages beyond the latest 10k; as soon as you started paying they’d all be available. Not that there was anything definitively problematic, but it just would take one newspaper to request “all Slack messages from the day before the brexit vote” and suddenly there’d be problems with the public’s perception of civil service political neutrality.

Because to be honest, everyone is political in some form or another, especially the people that effectively take a pay cut to work in the civil service because they want to help citizens, and it’s a daily challenge to keep that political nature from spilling out into your work.

Everyone needs a place to unburden, and if you’re legally forbidden from doing that with friends and family you rely on the workplace. In the end the best I could do was make a FOIA reaction emoji to remind people to tone it down if something could be perceived in the wrong way by the press.

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

#90

Post by JoeAltmaier »

cheschire wrote: post #88
clort wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 informatio…

It was done near a scandal, but not necessarily in reaction to one. Correlation is not causation.

Does anything, anything happen in politics that isn't in reaction to a causation?
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