Away from the mini-Budget noise, Guido’s just got a hold of highly classified intelligence concerning the now-Deputy PM Thérèse Coffey. Back in 2016, while she was still a junior Defra Minister, Coffey created and ran a WhatsApp group chat containing all the then-Parliamentary Under Secretaries of State, most of whom were women. Now, For Your Eyes Only, a co-conspirator has shared the name she aptly gave that group… Pussy Galore.
* Yes, her name is Thérèse, not Theresa. Unfortunately Guido’s source can’t spell. The screenshots have been verified as authentic.
Bad news for just about everybody working in SW1: WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart has warned the app may be pulled from the UK entirely if the Online Safety Bill reaches the statute books. As if this bill needed any more reasons to be scrapped…
Speaking on the BBC’s Tech Tent podcast, Cathcart slammed the bill for an amendment which would force WhatsApp and other tech companies to make their “best endeavours” to use new technology to flag inappropriate and abusive content, essentially by snooping on users’ private conversations. As Cathcart puts it, “what’s being proposed is that […] we read everyone’s messages”.
Essentially, the bill would give Ofcom the power to compel companies to abandon end-to-end encryption. Like the Free Speech Union points out, this is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut: when the UK’s own Information Commissioner’s Office is saying this sort of thing is a bad idea, maybe it needs rethinking. First the Bill gives Big Tech the power to censor online content, now it wants them to create back door keys to everyone’s private messages…
Unfortunate scenes in the main Tory WhatsApp chat last night, as finger-on-the-pulse MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown announced to the group “Let’s hope Sir Tom recovers well“… sadly, one hour and thirty two minutes after his family announced his death. It took an intervention from Pauline Latham to convey to Clifton-Brown the sad news.
Following the hacking of one of No. 10’s EU negotiation team’s phones in August, Guido posed the question who would have most to gain from illegally accessing the WhatsApp messages of a top member of the UK’s Brexit team. Coincidentally, it’s been reported today the EU Council of Ministers has an “almost complete” resolution on the table to ban end-to-end encryption on apps like WhatsApp, mandating access of “competent authorities in area of security & criminal justice.” Another day, another reason to breathe a sigh of relief over Brexit…
The coronavirus epidemic is starting to have some irritating side effects for MPs, who are suddenly seeing Whatsapp activity shoot through the roof as a result of their isolated colleagues increased phone activity from their home. Guido hears that hundreds of messages are barraging Tory MPs from other Tory MPs sent both late at night and early in the morning, pelting other MPs and patient SpAds with questions and suggestions. One MP tells Guido they’re glad Maria Caulfield is going off to work in the NHS because it might mean she’ll contribute less in their groups…
Nadine Dorries couldn’t make the ERG’s 6pm meeting last night and so instead has sent a list of seven key points she would have liked to have raised. She hits out at members who have “let the ERG down as a group”, those who see themselves as “above” sending a letter, and those who are constantly briefing journalists.
Read the mammoth message in full here:
At 6pm, I will be chairing the finance bill on the floor of the house and therefore, cannot attend the meeting.If I were there, I would be very, very keen to speak and make the following points. I would be grateful if the chairman would acknowledge my comments during the meeting.
