Slashdot Mirror
UK Politician Criticised For Using Hotmail
nk497 writes "The UK justice secretary Jack Straw has been criticised for using Hotmail as his official government email account after he apparently fell foul of a Nigerian spammer in a phishing attack. A security researcher said using such an account not only left the government in security trouble, but meant any emails sent could not be necessarily accessed via the Freedom of Information Act."
It was not his official government email account, it was his constituency email account.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw's email account has been hacked by internet fraudsters who sent out messages to hundreds of his contacts which claimed he was stranded in Nigeria and needed 3,000 dollars to fly home.
I would think if a government minister was really stranded somewhere in Africa, they would contact the nearest British embassy, which would surely know their whereabouts anyway, and the embassy would get them home easily. There are dangers on the internet; this is not one of them.
Since when has Jack Straw been very interested in Freedom of Information? Under his Home-secretaryship Britain has become a surveillance state.
This name alone is so creepy. Orwellian use of word "Freedom".
839*929
What kind of people are his acquaintances? Fellow monkeys running the country?!?! Terrifying. I know sensor ship is a big issue and the internet should be free for all and all of that lovely stuff. But if you are so stupid to fall victim to something so ridiculously false, then you shouldn't be allowed to use the internet. You don't have the cognitive skills required!
Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
I'd be interested to know how his account was broken into... particularly if he was bright enough to have a weak password and not keep it secret, or if he actually gave answers to secret questions. (I still find "secret" questions the most bizarre layer of security.)
Also, what kind of an image does a Hotmail address convey on a constituency?? Hardly sounds official and befitting a governmental website, to me at least.
You know, I always thought of these Nigerian scams as intelligence tests...and having someone who fails even such a basic test in a quite high office is somehow scaring me.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
This is the same Straw that rather than filing a legal challenge to the information commissionars ruling that the Iraq war documents be leaked decided to just outright make the first use ever of ministerial veto against FOIA requests.
His reasons for vetoing were, from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7907991.stm) and I shit you not:
"Releasing the papers would do "serious damage" to cabinet government, he said, and outweighed public interest needs."
I'm not sure why he'd think it's in public interest to keep a corrupt, incompetent, totalitarian regime in power?
And:
"There is a balance to be struck between openness and maintaining aspects of our structure of democratic government,"
Sorry, I thought the whole point of democracy was that we get to decide that balance, not those in power? His decision flies in the very face of democracy.
So quite why anyone as per the summary would think Straw cares in the slightest about FOIA I don't know. He's just like Jacqui Smith and nearly all the others in the Labour party right now- a wannabe dictator who oppresses freedom of information to cling on to power.
Now i know most of that was mostly personal use but if i remember correctly they had the contacts to her aides and a drafted letter to the Calif governor.
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
I'd pay Nigerians to *keep* Jack Straw. As would a lot of people. Thank god we can vote him out, and get in... hmmm... well...
Releasing those documents would, indeed, do serious damage to the government.
Given what happened in those years it would be very likely expose behaviour and decisions that would very much be at odds with the "democratic" government they allege to run. So yes, it would result in serious damage to the current government.
The problem is that it seriously needs some damage to restore even the IMPRESSION of democracy - they don't even bother to pretend at the moment.
The sooner this lot goes the better. I hope the British public has learned their lesson and it takes at least 3 generations before a pretend Labour setup gets to power again.
That may be exactly why he uses it...
1. Actually, from my experience, I've seen actually intelligent people fall to such scams once greed clouds their judgment. E.g., I failed to convince an otherwise extremely intelligent woman -- and for bonus points, usually she was the one selling snake oil to gullible PHBs -- to not "invest" in a pyramid scam. She understood exponents perfectly, but there was no getting her to accept that she is not in the first ranks who'll get their payoff, and/or that there aren't enough suckers any more to fill more than the first ranks of such a scheme.
At some point wishful thinking takes over any other kind of reason. They _want_ it to be true so hard, that basically cognitive dissonance rebuilds their mental model to something where they can win.
That's how the brain works: when you have two conflicting pieces of your mental model, it has to be resolved to something internally consistent one way or the other. And it's extremely uncomfortable while not yet resolved. All animals seem to work that way. What's different in humans is that you can essentially have a piece of the model that's so important to you that it can't be displaced, so something else has to go. Basically you _can_ distort your mental model as far as needed for any kind of wishful thinking, if you wish hard enough, and being intelligent or perceptive has nothing to do with it.
Among other things, that's why once someone started on such a path, it's harder than ever to quit. Accepting "ok, I've been a dolt, the Nigerian prince doesn't exist, I'll never see that money again" means basically a loss of self-respect, so it's a big no. So something else in that mental model has to be changed to support the idea that you're smart after all, too smart to be fooled in fact, and you only make smart investments. Hence the already lost money becomes a smart investment to be continued.
If anything, having such immovable ideas about oneself makes it easier to happen. If you're too convinced that you're too smart to be fooled, that just creates the setup for defending a dumb decision against all evidence.
2. Actually it seems to me like it's a test of honesty. As the saying goes, "you can't scam an honest person." Virtually all scams, from pyramid schemes to Nigerian advance fee scams to "Soapy" Smith's soap-with-banknotes scam to everything else, have the same common denominator: the "mark" thought he's getting some undeserved money at someone else's expense.
E.g., most people actually understand a pyramid scheme and that it will run out of marks soon very well, but they think they can join in early enough to be a part of the scammers not of the losers. E.g., I doubt that anyone in the Nigerian advanced fee scam was actually planning to dutifully give the widow's/orphan's/whatever money once it's in their account. And at any rate they were willing to break some laws and do shady stuff. So even if (ad absurdum) it were just for the promised fee, it's still a wannabe crook willing to break or bend the law for money. E.g., stock tip scams work on people who think that they can move fast enough to sell when it peaks and basically be a part of the scammers instead of the victims. E.g., the dolts who bought the Eiffel Tower from Victor Lustig thought they can give a bribe to get the rights to that metal at substantial discount, i.e., that they can use corruption to scam the state. Etc.
So basically it's just a honesty test. If you can say "no, that wouldn't be right", you can't be scammed. If you go, basically, "OMG, it's a one in a lifetime occasion to scam someone out of their money" then congrats, it's your own dishonesty that pwns you.
From there, again, being too convinced that you're too smart to be scammed is just making it actually easier. Those guys who bought the Eiffel Tower too were convinced that they're too smart to be fooled, savvy, good judges of caracter, etc, and know a genuine corrupt government official when they see one. The ones who think they understand exponents or the stock market too well to possibly be wrong about anything, just use that to support and defend the decision to jump on a pyramid scam or stock tip scam respectively, once greed started to cloud their judgment. Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
the alder-critters http://www.waukeganweb.net/localgovernment.html where i live use their att and comcast emails as official POC all the time. i always thought that was weird. aside from the security angle, who am i to judge?
good lookin bunch, eh?
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
When a national politician does it I can only imagine he's got something to hide.
Business is Business and at the level of mr. Straw this is even more important.
Even though I am well aware that many government institutions are only recently discovering the net as an integral part of society the various levels of government have since many years the ability to run their own mail servers, including all the extra security you'd expect.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I'd suggest a switch to Gmail, it's got nicer themes.
The connection with Hotmail isn't even secure. All mail is read via a http:/// connection. A well placed trace can see all this mail easily. Not quite what you'd expect for government mail.
Did you even read the grandparent post, or the title of your own post? The fact that he's a cabinet minister is entirely irrelevant. What you should be criticising him for is failing to adequately protect e-mail from and to his constituents.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. -Robert J. Hanlon
Unfortunately neither of the two options are particularly comforting. Bugger.
In summary, Jack Straw has many hats, and the email address he uses should depend on the hat he is wearing at the time.
"And which hat are you talking through now, Minister?"
It's a sad fact that government based email messages have a tendency to "disappear" when the politician in question comes under internal investigation (US, I'm looking at you).
Providing a hotmail account is accessed every 30 days, I think Jack would have a much harder time "disappearing" those messages ... so in terms or transparency / auditability, maybe it's better to leave things as they are ?
That's how the brain works: when you have two conflicting pieces of your mental model, it has to be resolved to something internally consistent one way or the other. And it's extremely uncomfortable while not yet resolved. All animals seem to work that way. What's different in humans is that you can essentially have a piece of the model that's so important to you that it can't be displaced, so something else has to go. Basically you _can_ distort your mental model as far as needed for any kind of wishful thinking, if you wish hard enough, and being intelligent or perceptive has nothing to do with it.
Gotta love cognitive dissonance... everything from Communism to Christianity depends on it.
to do with governments?
The guy is using Hotmail, and everything is being transmitted in plain text. Just pass a new law that installs as many sniffers as the Brits have security cams, and everyone will have access to the information!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Sir Humphrey: It is so difficult for me you see, as I am wearing two hats.
Jim: Yes, isn't that rather awkward for you.
Sir Humphrey: Not if one is in two minds.
Bernard: Or has two faces.
This sig all sigs devours
How about you? You are always that impolite? i was responding to the above person. You think your very smart?
According to his profile he is sometimes Interesting, Insightful, Informative, Redundant, and occasionally posts Flamebait... Just the kind of person one would hope to find here.
and I'm sure I just got an off topic...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
From TFA: "any emails sent could not be necessarily accessed via the Freedom of Information Act."
Surely that's the point!? He's a known and wanted international war criminal, the last thing he wants is for a trail of emails incriminating him any further to be accessible through FOI Act requests... I'd have thought that obvious.
Wow, I really didn't feel like I needed to know about your blow-up nerds, but, um, good for you..?
Similar issues apply in state government. On account of Open Records Acts, state governments are wise to insist that employees (including governors) route all business e-mail through a central e-mail archive and to encourage employees to take all personal e-mail to personal accounts. --Ben
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
Keep on rollin, just a mile to go;
Keep on rollin my old buddy, youre movin much too slow.