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.
Ok, so the bbc article gives more info.
Looks like it was a secretary who responded to a phishing e-mail. Good to know we're all in safe hands...
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.
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...
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.
There's a decent possibility that the Liberal Democrats will hold the balance of power this time though as whilst Conservatives will almost certainly be the majority party, they wont have a big enough majority to do whatever they want by outnumbering the other two parties put together like Labour currently does.
Of course, on evil things Labour and the Tories may end up just banding together and ignoring the Lib Dems altogether but taking ID cards for example- right now Labour can go ahead and vote for them regardless of what the opposition thinks but in the scenario described above and if it was the Tories proposing the law and Labour opposed it just as the Tories oppose ID cards then the Lib Dems could side with the opposition to overthrow it.
It's not ideal still but at least it'd be a whole lot better than now where one party can push their entire agenda regardless of what the Tories and Lib Dems put together think. Right now for the Lib Dems and Tories to defeat a Labour proposal they need to manage to get support from some of Labour as well so it only works for as long as Labour's proposal is so bad that even half their own party wont support it, but seeing as most their party do support ID cards then we're talking about something pretty damn bad!
This is why I hope people that are considering voting Lib Dem do so, not because there's any hope of them getting power, but because there is at least hope of them holding the balance of power which is a major step forward on the last couple of decades. This is going to be a really important election for people to learn to vote for the party they want rather than voting tactically to avoid the party they don't want (which inevitably ends up in the situation we have now!).
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?"
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.
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