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The whole UK government is run via WhatsApp. The threat to withdraw service should have concentrated minds.
by ascorbic 3y ago
The whole UK government is run via WhatsApp. The threat to withdraw service should have concentrated minds.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThis isn't true, is it? If so that's slightly terrifying.
- midasuni 3y agoThe political communications are done with WhatsApp. This is illegal of course. There has been no discussion of the obvious national security risk. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/mar/22/uk-ministers-accused-of-government-by-whatsapp-in-court https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/mar/22/uk-ministers-acc...
- kmeisthax 3y agoThis isn't even limited to the UK. In the US, we have presidents, vice presidents, and presidential candidates all under investigation for mishandling records by running their own e-mail servers. The most charitable explanation being that they don't want to have to deal with separate personal and work devices; the less charitable explanation being "fuck records laws".
- jiqiren 3y agoI was a federal contractor for NASA and let me tell you about government email: quota of 250MB of storage (2010-2012). I spent every morning moving emails with attachments to local folders on my Mac (which had no backups) to keep from going over quota. If I went on a 2 week vacation emails would start to bounce to me. After that fiasco I understood why Colin Powell told Hillary Clinton to just run her own email server (for non-classified communication).
- midoridensha 3y agoSo what was keeping the President from just issuing an Executive Order increasing the email storage quota?
- anticensor 3y agoThat would require increase in the backing storage.
- midasuni 3y agoThe most charitable reason would be “I don’t want to deal with corporate Bs”. I’m sure we’ve all worked in those types of places. Doesn’t really apply when it’s the Exco board though, if they say jump then it’s the CTOs job to make it happen.
- amiga-workbench 3y agoIt's not completely untrue, there was a whole hoo-hah over getting Boris Johnsons WhatsApp messages. They use it to get around the requirement that official communications be logged and available for later scrutiny, much like a bank has to retain communications in case of an audit.
- gridspy 3y agoAssuming that is true, it's amusing that the politicians are trying to strip communications privacy from the masses while desiring it themselves.
- mcjiggerlog 3y agoYou also need to understand the context that in the UK, and most of the west other than the US, WhatsApp is just the default communication channel for messaging. If you text someone, it's just assumed it's via WhatsApp.
- RegW 3y agoI don't think so. When you text somebody it's assumed it's SMS, but if your friendship circle is on Android then in actual fact it's Google Messages. All the same benefits: end-to-end encryption and data mining.
- jonp888 3y agoNo. I have lived in the UK for 35 years and I didn't even know Google Messages existed until you mentioned it. WhatsApp is the default and I would only use SMS in the rare case that someone did not use WhatsApp. There is no automatic integration on Android phones between SMS and another network the way iMessage is automatic.
- 0xFEE1DEAD 3y agoGermany chiming in to agree. WhatsApp is the default
- afandian 3y agoThe rules don't apply to them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66165001 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66165001
- BookhouseGames 3y agoThe rules never apply to them.
- tailspin2019 3y agoIt does seem to be slightly true
- giobox 3y agoI think its increasingly true of several countries, not just the UK. Any State with strong Freedom of Information legislation not surprisingly creates incentives for certain political operatives to want to avoid exposure by use of unofficial channels further out of reach of FoI - private WhatsApp groups etc etc. I don't see this as any different than the instances of private email service mischief that has occurred in a lot of States too over the last decade (avoiding use of official email accounts for contentious discussions).
- rollcat 3y agoI think that if you hold a position in the government, all of your communication (including private email, chats, etc) should be subject to public scrutiny. A government official should be defined not as someone who is holding power, but as an elected representative of the people.
- iamdelirium 3y agoDid you even think out this train of thought? Does this cover medical communications, military secrets, private chat between family members, etc?
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- rollcat 3y ago> Did you even think out this train of thought? Of course not, I'm just a random person on the Internet ;) The problem here is that a basic loophole is being abused to defeat the spirit of the law, thus making the operation of the government less transparent. The consequences should ramp up in proportion with the level of the abuse. You're using private WhatsApp to conduct state business? Your WhatsApp chat logs should be subject to FoI. If you want to keep family chat private, then move it to Telegram, and DON'T use Telegram to conduct state business, because otherwise your Telegram chat logs are next up to be scrutinized. I don't think the "spirit" of this idea is going too far? > military secrets There already are established procedures and laws for dealing with state secrets, including strategic information such as submarine designs, locations, nuke launch codes, etc. Whatever FoI/transparency laws are in place, they need to respect the need for protecting state secrets - that should be pretty obvious.
- sigwinch28 3y agoI don’t think it’s as much official government discussion as it is party chatter. See lockdown party scandal, Forde report, typical CCHQ party lines.
- nlitened 3y agoWhat they would use instead? Plain-text emails? Plain-text SMS? Paper mail?
- fulafel 3y agoSignal?
- nlitened 3y agoHow is it different from WhatsApp (apart from being worse feature-wise and not many people using it)? As far as I remember, WhatsApp uses Signal's encryption, so technically they're the same level of protection?
- fisian 3y agoFrance has their own version of Matrix https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/document/french-government-launches-house-developed-messaging-service-tchap https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observato...
- nlitened 3y agoThe article you've linked says it didn't go far (buggy, vulnerable, difficult to use, test deployment in 2020). Also, Google Play store's reviews say the same. It's only natural that when a public servant want to make sure their message actually reaches the recipient, they would rather use a solution that 100% works. That's not malice, it's common sense.
- lozenge 3y agoEmail using a secured mail server so that it doesn't go across the Internet?
- thefurdrake 3y agoThis question confuses me. Are we really in a year where people don't know you can securely encrypt email within an organization? This is a solved problem, and it's been solved for decades. It's confusing because you nailed "Plain-text emails" but completely ignored signed, encrypted emails for some reason.
- borissk 3y agoDid Mr Johnson provide his WhatsApp message history to the government?
- bodge5000 3y agoThat was certainly true for Boris, I can only imagine if he was in on it a lot of the other senior tories would have been as well. That's obviously not a good thing at all, and also I would think illegal, but I guess at least it's encrypted. The irony.
- eastbound 3y agoWasn’t Boris russian-backed and therefore using Signal?