UK Is Banning Apple Watch From Cabinet Meetings Over Russian Hacking Fears (techweekeurope.co.uk) 106
Mickeycaskill quotes a report from TechWeekEurope UK: Ministers have been forbidden to wear the Apple Watch during cabinet meetings due to the risk they could be hacked by Russian agents, according to a report. Prime minister Theresa May imposed the new rules following several high-profile hacks that have been blamed on Russia. Several cabinet ministers previously wore the Apple Watch, including former Justice Secretary Michael Gove. Mobile phones have already been banned due to similar concerns. Politically motivated hackers have caused disruption in several recent incidents, including the hack of the Democratic National Committee, which resulted in the release of a large cache of internal emails. One of the paper's sources said: "The Russians are trying to hack everything."
Russia Playing Catch Up To Corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
So if Russia can hack into those meetings that would already imply that Apple could hack into those meetings but some how Apple being able to hack in, is OK but Russia is a no no. Could that be because Russia is having a fun time publishing the results of the hacks, whilst Apple keeps them secret and buys off the corrupt politicians they discover.
Any and all of the information, that can be hacked off those system by government agencies from any where in the world, obviously can be well and truly 'hacked' (hacked not quite the accurate word to reflect the purposeful design functions of that software), by the supplying corporation.
Take the stupid of politicians wanting to keep secrets by using public email accounts, seriously how could any one be that stupid, unless they had information from the corporation that their secrets would be kept, well, as long as they continued to accept money and toed the line.
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I'm completely behind the theory that Russia is engaging in increased hacking of foreign state targets, but I think this is more about Dictator May's authoritarian stance.
For those not following British politics, the Conservatives were elected on a specific manifesto, with David Cameron as their leader expected to stay on until 2020 when he said he'd step down. After Brexit, Cameron decided he didn't want to deal with the mess the vote had created and resigned as PM. The Conservatives had to vote to elect a
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Apparently this is what "getting our sovereignty back by voting for Brexit means" - secretive dictatorship.
I had initially thought it was mostly an influential faction wanting rid of pesky EU legislation like environmental constraints and employee rights. Funny how things can start getting worse than you expect.
We can only hope there are enough decent Conservatives
I don't think "decent Conservatives" exist. They now have well over a decade of government ahead and the real sociopaths are going to be vying to pin any Brexit problems on May to get those keys to No. 10 for themselves.
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What do you mean "paranoid" exactly? Are you suggesting that May isn't pursuing an unelected manifesto? Are you suggesting she has in fact been completely transparent?
I'm intrigued to think which parts you believe are paranoia, rather than established fact. Did I miss a general election or something? I'd really love to know where you think May's manifesto got it's democratic mandate from because it sure as hell wasn't the last general of the EU referendum - none of those things obtained public backing for p
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Unfortunately people make this mistake with a lot of political terms, for example, if you call Donald Trump far-right people say "Oh but he hasn't created death camps like Hitler so that's totally unfair!", but that's not really the point - it's more than possible to be far-right without being Hitler and Trump fits the very political definition of far-right.
Consider Qaboos Bin Said of Oman, or Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, both dictators by your definition (and by any definition!), but they went a long way
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This is an issue that I think we're going to have to address in the UK now. If you favour stronger political accountability and more democratic power then leaving the EU does remove one large layer of indirectly appointed authority that has probably been more influential in practice than the directed elected authority that came with it. I imagine that was part of the motivation for a lot of the Leave voters, even if the media do love to talk about immigration and racism a lot more. But leaving the EU is sur
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She's a dictator because she wasn't elected, and she's a dictator because she's pursuing a set of policies for which there is no democratic mandate whatsoever.
May was elected by the Conservative MPs who in turn were elected by the people. That's how our parliamentary democracy works. You might as well call the President of the US a dictator because they are elected by the Electoral College rather than by the people directly.
It's not true that May is forcing through policies without a mandate, parliament will have to vote on any new legislation. It is true that Brexit was not in the Conservative manifesto, but holding a vote on Brexit and enacting the will of
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"May was elected by the Conservative MPs who in turn were elected by the people."
Yes, on a specific manifesto, which May has ripped up. I don't think you understand how our democracy works.
"It's not true that May is forcing through policies without a mandate, parliament will have to vote on any new legislation. It is true that Brexit was not in the Conservative manifesto, but holding a vote on Brexit and enacting the will of the people was. There is a clear mandate here, and not for "Brexit in name only" th
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Yes, on a specific manifesto, which May has ripped up. I don't think you understand how our democracy works.
Sadly I'm not sure you do either. You don't vote for a manifesto, you vote for an individual to represent you in parliament.
My MP is an utter cunt but he still (badly) represents me in parliament. I didn't vote for him or his manifesto. The people that did vote for him to represent him are still represented by him.
Shit, he didn't agree with the manifesto when he ran for parliament himself.
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"Sadly I'm not sure you do either. You don't vote for a manifesto, you vote for an individual to represent you in parliament."
Unless you're voting for an independent, then MPs in the UK sign up to their party manifestos and agree to back them. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.
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Given the manifesto has no standing in law, no, you do not vote for the manifesto. You vote for your MP.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
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If MPs were all truly independent and you weren't voting based on party manifesto then we wouldn't have a Prime Minister, a cabinet, and party whips. The manifesto is the document that drives party policy from the top down and hence on what politicians are whipped into voting for, which they do in the vast majority of cases with the fringe cases being only those that were either typically not in manifestos (i.e. declarations of war ala Syria) or made such a hash up of by cabinet and PM that MPs distance the
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Indeed. Clegg and the Lib Dems deviated in a couple of key areas from their manifesto and became a marginal part of the subsequent parliament as a result.
May is risking the same response from the electorate. Her choice, but doesn't make her a dictator.
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Right now however, the lack of general election means she has no mandate to push through her entirely secretive manifesto where random policies pop up that no one has given her a mandate for such as grammar schools, foreign worker lists, increased public spending and a slow down in debt reduction and so on and so forth.
It is too restrictive to require the government to only implement policies in their manifesto as this would restrict the government from reacting to changing circumstances. Almost all the policy changes you mention are a reaction to the (hopefully short-term) uncertainty caused by Brexit. The policy on grammar schools was not mentioned in the last Conservative manifesto but was not ruled out by it either. It would not be practical to restrict government to only enact policies that were in their manifesto
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While you may be correct according to the way our system is set up, the objection a lot of people have been raising is more about whether that system is in any meaningful sense democratic at this point.
May was elected by the Conservative MPs who in turn were elected by the people.
May wasn't elected by Conservative MPs, she was appointed after everyone else dropped out of the race due to the political infighting within her party. No-one actually voted for her to be PM at any point.
Those Conservative MPs were indeed elected by the people, but only by the people who voted Conservative in
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I like her revised manifesto rather more than the one the Conservatives were voted in on, but fundamentally, you're almost right.
Parliamentary checks and balances will mitigate much of it, the Civil Service will sabotage much of it and the SNP will vote against all of it, so on the whole she probably can't do as much damage as the person she's replaced anyway.
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Conservatives have a working majority. They won't be immune to civil service sabotage but it doesn't matter how anyone else votes; they only lose if their own MPs rebel.
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I doubt that anyone can actually hack into those meetings. Phones are already banned, they are just extending the ban to all smart watches for obvious reasons. I imagine that most other countries do the same thing. This isn't really surprising or a story.
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I'm amazed that there is actually a first post, that doesn't say 'frosty piss' that is modded interesting and is by someone with an account.
Attribution is Geopolitical... and dumb (Score:2)
You could have *probably* named 5 or 6 different major state and non-state players in the cyber espionage/hacking business that are of equal or greater concern, but Russia is the convenient target these days.
Seems the cold war is back on, but to me it would be far better to maintain somewhat better relations with Russia as a hedge of China and Saudi(Sunni Islamist) influence in world affairs. Even the EU and India should be considered as a potential competitors that should be worked with as friends, while
Re: The Big Lie (Score:2)
> This approach to propaganda was spelled out explicitly by Adolf Hitler in his book "Mein Kampf."
Who went on to use it with great success in his wildly popular Third Reich, convincing an entire nation of otherwise well-meaning Germans to take part in, or look away from, the extermination of an entire race.
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it's not a stain on my conscience. i wasn't there.
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Well, my great-grandfather died at Auschwitz.
He fell out of his watch-tower...
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What's really unsettling is all the pro-Trump posts I've been seeing here and other places parroting Putin's line on EU/Baltics/Ukraine/Syria.
And I've yet to see a single pro-Trump voice speak up to disavow it. Not a one.
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"The Russians are trying to hack everything." No evidence, but you sure hear it a lot, so it seems true.
No, there's plenty of evidence. There's also plenty of evidence that the USA, UK, China, and so on, are trying to hack everything. What do you think the NSA, GCHQ, and friends do all day?
Hand-waving hypocrites. (Score:2)
"The Russians are trying to hack everything."
Like various agencies un the US and UK aren't? Ubiquitous illegal spying on their own citizens - it's getting hard to tell the difference between the old USSR and today's western governments.
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Document for us a single 'gulag' as you term it, within the continental United States.
Don't cite a conspiracy theory organization. Give us a real location that we can pull up with Google Maps.
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An "interrogation facility" that does't keep records of who's in it, that relatives can't find them, that the occupants have been "disappeared" without a court order, and, as you yourself admit, employs forced labor, is a gulag. Next you'll be saying gitmo is just an "enhanced interrogation facility", instead of what it is - illegal imprisonment and torture that breeds more terrorists.
Google defines a gulag as a forced labor camp. Nothing more is needed to satisfy the criteria.
And with 16.7 million kids
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and as to gulags
Gulag: NOUN
1.a system of labor camps maintained in the former Soviet Union from 1930 to 1955 in which many people died.
(gulag)
a camp
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Sorry that highly questionable claim about children in "food insecure households" even if true does not equal bread lines. Which were daily lines in the soviet union to obtain basic food stuffs. Even when adequate supplies existed the process and procedures to obtain the food items were inefficient and time consuming.
Go to your local food banks and you'll see the bread lines. Some distribute 1 or 2 days a week, some daily. Same as soup kitchens operate either a few days a week or daily. All depends on the resources available. Seniors are the most consistent users of food banks [feedingamerica.org]. And things have gotten worse since the study, which was done in 2010. Their food banks distributed more than 4 billion meals [feedingamerica.org]. And that doesn't count the food banks and soup kitchens that operate independently of Feed America. 46 million Americ
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Bread lines are due to a general unavailability or scarceness of food, not due to a lack of funds by those needing to buy such food.
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Just an excuse. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Is there actually any evidence (e.g. Snowden) of the US conducting SIGINT against the UK in violation of the five-eyes agreement?
I thought GCHQ did it for the NSA in Britain.
Surely its just common sense for smartphones etc to be excluded from cabinet meetings.
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... Since these organizations are not allowed to act on domestically...
What makes you think that?The USA may have a lot of laws that the remaining 98% of humanity could have too but it also has a whole load that nobody else has or misses.
Your rules (supposedly) stopping the CIA spying domestically are unusual in your, US only, laws. They are actually benefit the people and not the government or big money. At least they would be if we could believe that they were followed and that we haven't had a lot of revelations to the contrary.
Anyway, other countries don't even have the
Look, over there! (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect, given PM May's well-documented willingness to trample on the privacy rights of her citizens, that the ban has more to do with prevention of any leaks a la Snowden. What is said in cabinet, stays in cabinet.
I'm reminded of that famous quote by Otto von Bismarck, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." We don't want the proles learning what we really think of them.
What stops them after the meeting? (Score:3)
What is said in cabinet, stays in cabinet.
No it won't if their phone and/or watch has been hacked. This is an utterly stupid rule because if a minister's phone will really listen in to all s/he says then the moment s/he leaves cabinet and starts talking with his civil servants and MP colleagues to put what was discussed in place then whomever hacked the phone will hear the plans then. At best this puts a tiny extra hurdle in the way.
I suspect that what they are far more worried about is that someone in cabinet will record their discussions and
Banning devices with a mic or camera is news?? (Score:2)
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"VICE News Investigation Finds Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London" (January 15, 2016)
https://news.vice.com/article/... [vice.com]
"... were found at several locations in the British capital, including UK parliament, a peaceful anti-austerity protest, and the Ecuadorian embassy. "
Our dystopia (Score:1)
Up to last year, the evil empire using its big bad hackers was China. Now, the enemy du jour is Russia. It looks like during our last hate week, we went from being at war with Eurasia, to being at war with Eastasia.
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But we've always been at war with Eastasia...
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The Democrats, and their big corporate donors, don't have major business stakes with companies in Russia. It's at least in part that simple.
2/10 propaganda (Score:2)
Members of the cabinets are high profiles for targeted hacking - nation states looking for leverage, criminals looking to make a buck, hell even script kiddies for the 'lulz'. Our governments are well aware of the security shortcomings in our communications technology, proven by hoarding of security vulnerabilities rather than fixing them, don't forget the outrageous level of surveillance and spying. So, I'm begging the question, why would phones even be allowed in such a meeting?
Tldr: all the phones are tu
Bears in a watch? (Score:2)
Does Apple have some unique global network of its very own that all data can be sent and extracted without GCHQ discovery?
If inflight collecting for the US and UK was no issue, how can hacking a consumer grade US watch go undetected?
Glenn Greenwald Says NSA, GCHQ Dismayed They Don't Have Access To In-Flight Internet Communication
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com] (Dec 30th 2013)
"The very idea that human b
*facepalm* (Score:2)
You know, someone is going to need to take one for the team, and go "educate" our leaders about all things dealing with electricity. I say someone, because whenever we get down to the discussion of whom, it's always somebody else...
The Bear is Punctual . (Score:3)
"I am here because I always got to parliament five minutes late, and they charged me with expenses fraud," says the first.
"I am here because I kept getting to parliament five minutes early, and they charged me with spying for Russia," says the second.
"I am here because I got to parliament on time every day," says the third, "and they charged me with owning an Apple watch."
What about Windows computers? (Score:2)
If they are concerned about their systems being penetrated, they should focus on moving everything away from the clumsy grasp of Microsoft programmers.
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A thought or joke typed, then deleted. Keylogging is integral to good 5 eye staff management.
That joy that PRISM like access gives over an entire nation is not worth fixing for digital security.
As a sheltered workshop the constant support calls keeps a lot of people working and happy fixing MS things everyday, all day.
Its strange that Apple is now the tal
Pot meet kettle (Score:4, Insightful)
Michael Gove (Score:4, Informative)
Several cabinet ministers previously wore the Apple Watch, including former Justice Secretary Michael Gove.
This ought to be enough to ensure no British politician ever wears an Apple Watch ever again.
For our friends around the world who aren't aware, Michael Gove has the unique distinction of pissing off literally everybody during the Brexit referendum. He told a bunch of lies while campaigning to leave, while supporting Boris Johnson as a potential future Prime Minister. After the vote he then stabbed Boris Johnson in the back by declaring his own intent to run for leadership which was never going to win popular support, even from Brexiteers. Add in that he profoundly unpopular in education and justice (he was minister for both) and you have an individual who makes a worrying ambassador for your brand.
You'd be better off with a celebrity endorsement from Ebola.