The police in the UK think they can be trusted with facial recognition data, including destroying all images not relevant to reported crimes.
And yet, they could not be bothered to correctly document the location of the theft of the PM’s righthand man’s phone. The messages and data held on this phone were a matter of utmost national security.
‘Initially, the Met said officers were “too busy” to speak to McSweeney directly. He was given a crime reference number and the case was closed.’
Which is what happens to anyone who has their phone stolen.
The police no longer seem to consider phone theft a crime they can be bothered to do a thing about.
I would imagine that McSweeney would have tried to explain who he was and the significance of his phone being nicked…or maybe whoever took the call just thought it was a hoax?
But equally, why were the plod the only ones involved?
How integral do you have to be to the inner workings of government for MI5 not to be concerned about this kind of theft and the risks of it falling into the wrong hands?
McSweeney would have been aware of Starmer’s every movement - surely there are certain bad actors that would have been quite keen to get their hands on that kind of info?
I find shows like Slow Horses quite terrifying. The resources and focus of our security services remain a mystery to the public - I guess it was ever thus.
@JugglingWithEggs the reality is a lot more mundane, and secrecy is often used to hide the lack of resources - same as the Police, everything is often diverted to dealing with genuinely nasty/violent people, or in the case of international espionage, keeping an eye on whatever Global South country hasn't done what the West wanted it to do.
This also begs the question of whether he was using a govt issue device (which surely should have had /some/ data logging), or a personal one (maybe to avoid the level of scrutiny?)
‘McSweeney reported the theft of his phone to No 10, the device was shut off remotely and he was given a new one with the same number the next day.’
But who did this and how many hours elapsed in between it being snatched and it being ‘shut off’ remotely?
@JugglingWithEggs it would likely be whatever outsourced contractor is handling the device management (could be somewhere like Vodafone or even Accenture/Capita etc) - interesting then that the govt /aren't/ able to recover all the messages and that they aren't fed through a service whereby they can be downloaded remotely (even old Windows phones could mirror them across multiple devices)
Most stolen phones are simply wiped or sent to China to be stripped for components to feed the aftermarket repair network (due to companies like Apple trying to lock it down) rather than scanned for the data..
I agree it seems that politicians and their aides regardless of party affiliation have a propensity to circumvent using official devices and platforms.
This is neither in the interests of the public, individual or government in the long run.
We live in a time when heads of state are literally being kidnapped or bombed to death. National security has never been more crucial.
Juggling With Eggs
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK