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You couldn't make this up if you tried.... the chuffing DEFENCE Secretary who is supposed to contribute to National Security, the very thing that Huawei are allegedly threatening!!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48126974
Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out Private Pike.
Any chance of sacking T. May?
Fatality
Why do you think he leaked it? Maybe he's the one with integrity and didn't want the UKs security sold down the river in order to appease the Chinese?
the very thing that Huawei are allegedly threatening!!
I thought huawai were threatening the USA's control and access to our network infrastructure.
Absolute travesty in my opinion.
Denying ourselves access to decent kit because of a perceived threat that may or may not exist, and if it did exist would be incredibly easy to mitigate against...
Anyone think all Chinese firms are locked out of supplying critical stuff used in government? if not, what's the difference?
Why do you think he leaked it?
Because he is an entitled man-child with little or no concept of the fact that what he says has consequences, because nothing he has ever said or done before in his life has had to be tided up by him.
That's why
You realise we’re talking about Gavin Williamson, right? Of course he bloody leaked it. He’d sit back and watch half the country get nuked if he thought it’d further his leadership ambitions.
As this is the prism through which we must now view everything. This bunch of snivelling shysters pulling just about any stunt while jockeying for position to inherit the poisoned chalice from Theresa
Why couldn't it have been Liam Fox?
It could. Willaimson is still denying it was him.
It could have been any one of the morally bankrupt back-sliders but I can’t see him being so publicly sacked unless there was a smoking gun
Let’s face it... he’s hardly the sharpest tool in the box. He probably emailed it from his official parliamentary account
Will this mean that Daniel Kawczynksi will become the next SoSDefence? Because he’s a loon as well.
A good day for upright politicians with Northampton mp being binned off as well.
How long before he is back in the cabinet?
Has he breached the official secrets act, should he go to prison? There’s a free room at the Ecuadorian embassy if he wants it.
Will this mean that Daniel Kawczynksi will become the next SoSDefence? Because he’s a loon as well.
Luckily we have a long list of high calibre politicians to choose from.
Oh, forget I said that, it's Penny Mordaunt.
What’s worse: a minister with the highest security clearance in the country leaking a perceived risk to our security or them feeling they have to leak it because the PM is badgering through a security risk to appease the Chinese if we should find ourselves in trade negotiations in the near future.*
*i realise the party responsible** may have had their own alterior motive.
**he may not have leaked it - just said something like “I don’t blame them”.
Firing someone for supposedly leaking? Better replace him with someone that's known for their honesty and integrity.
Oh, ah well, never mind.
re breaking the official secrets act, IIRC May hasn't said he did it, just that she didn't trust him not to, so avoiding prison.
was only half paying attention mind, so happy to be corrected
He's apparently sworn 'on his children's lives' that it wasn't him or his staff.
Brave man trusting his children's lives to his staff is all I can think.
currently saying he was stitched up by others. Which doesn't explain his lack of co-operation that caused May to sack him.
Mays words though, "a lack of confidence in his ability to do the job". Does she own mirror, oh the ironing!
currently saying he was stitched up by others.
the prime minister sacking the defence secretary for being untrustworthy. the defence secretary accusing the prime minister of lying to stitch him up.
If this was any other country I'd be chuckling at their misfortune to have such a bunch of bickering ****s in charge...
Whatever happened to strong and stable?
perceived threat that may or may not exist, and if it did exist would be incredibly easy to mitigate against…
So the Chinese have already been caught sneaking extra chips into server motherboards during the manufacturing process. It has been shown that it is possible to build backdoors into chips and suspected that might also be happening. There is no way, short of destroying the chip that you are going to find that. So the threat exists but is almost impossible to find and can't be fixed, short of throwing out the motherboard/chip.
But unless you're just putting in a time bomb, blocking the ability to pull the trigger as such is entirely doable
Makes it even harder to use the phrase "disgraced former defence secretary..." without adding more quantifiers
The whole Huawei security thing looks a bit doubtful anyway.
There are well documented cases of US companies allowing the NSA to put bugs in the kit they sell:
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html
And surely if you're sending unencrypted data over the public internet it's pretty much game over anyway?
But unless you’re just putting in a time bomb, blocking the ability to pull the trigger as such is entirely doable
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. The purpose of building a back door into the hardware is to allow you to either inject malacious code into the data so that it infects a machine or many, or to monitor any traffic going across the chip/server etc. So you don't trigger it as such you just use it. There isn't a way to stop that from happening at the chip level with e.g a software patch.
And surely if you’re sending unencrypted data over the public internet it’s pretty much game over anyway?
The concerns are when you are sending data, unencrypted or not, over non-public internet.
So the Chinese have already been caught sneaking extra chips into server motherboards during the manufacturing proces
I think the report by Bloomberg on this from last year has been discredited.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/22/super_micro_chinese_spy_chip_sec/
The NSA does have form for tampering with network gear so they're no better, however.... In either the short or the long term the Chinese cannot be trusted to act in our interests. You could argue the same for the Yanks but it's far less plausible that over the long term they would look at screwing us and other western democracies over.
5G is critical national infrastructure. It's not 4G but a bit faster, but going to be the backbone of much of the communications at the national level for any country that adopts it.
As for mitigation it's far easier to build something that has trust (read reduced mistrust) at the foundational level than to mitigate after the fact. The Chinese are masters at hacking and whilst its possible to address known attack methods it's uncertainty over future methods that gives those in the know the concerns over having potentially untrustworthy components at the core of the infrastructure.
A simple bridge analogy is using a cost effective yet unproven alloy encased in concrete vs something that whilst twice the price is proven to last 100 years.
What I want to know is who in the Torygraph leaked their source? That one we won’t hear about. Journalists never reveal their sources. Yeah right. My friend went to prison for not giving his, but then he never had the chance to shaft Private Pike.
What a tragedy. Too dim to know and play by the rules.
I think the report by Bloomberg on this from last year has been discredited.
Yeah I'm not sure about that one. This idea popped up 5 or 6 years ago about Lenovo having hardware level backdoors and the intelligence community 'banning' them. This one sounds more plausible and the sources Bloomberg quoted sounded reasonable. The people who denied it had a stake in it not being true so it is a tough one. One researcher pointed out if it does exist, it'll have to "phone home" at some point and you can be sure anyone using a super micro server will be watching it closely, so if it does exist it'll be found eventually
The interesting thing was the researcher who proved you can build the 'flaw' into a single chip.
Quite frankly, a Defence Secretary that cant leak sensitive information to the press in a manner without being rumbled deserves to be sacked.
Replaced by someone who repeatedly lied about Turkey joining the EU. This is the level we have sunk to.
Corbyn is a threat to national security say various Tories...
Corbyn biggest threat is revealing how he grows those lovely marrows on his allotment
Denying ourselves access to decent kit because of a perceived threat that may or may not exist, and if it did exist would be incredibly easy to mitigate against
Are you for real? It's incredibly difficult to detect and mitigate against attacks that use firmware or hardware level vulnerabilities, even more so if they're a deliberate backdoor designed in by the vendor.
Huawei may not be a Chinese state instrument but 5G is going to be critical infrastructure, it's not just a faster version of 3G or 4G, it will allow some new ways of doing things and will end up being far more critical than previous generation telecomms infrastructure.
Also Huawei are a bunch of cowboys when it comes to following security best practice, take the recent DoublePulsar based exploit that was uncovered on their laptops. It seems they were doing this as a way of patching but really, WTAF?! In the current climate if their security oversight is so piss poor to think that was a good idea they don't deserve the benefit of any doubt.
What’s worse: a minister with the highest security clearance in the country leaking a perceived risk to our security or them feeling they have to leak it because the PM is badgering through a security risk to appease the Chinese if we should find ourselves in trade negotiations in the near future
The leak! There is no debate here. You cannot leak from such a committee, it totally undermines it's entire purpose. If UK intelligence services can't trust that the information divulged in such meetings won't be leaked then they're going to start restricting the information they give and that's a slippery slope. Sure what was actually leaked in this case is more about political games than national security but that's not the point and whoever did leak it should have known that, they should also be rotting in prison.
He will get a chance to defend himself in court though, yeah? Seeing as how breaching the Official Secrets Act is a criminal offence like.
He'll never make it to Akela now.
Ha, bet it was Penny Mordant that leaked it & framed him 😉
He always was a clown desperate to appeal to the daily mail crowd.
Still at least Chris grayling still has his job
Even tho yesterday we learnt that https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/no-deal-brexit-ferry-contracts-cancelled-at-cost-of-ps50-million_uk_5cc96df5e4b0913d078adece?
I do wonder if Williamson is so dim that in the phone call to the journalist he gave out enough info that the journalist added 2+2 together. So Williamson himself does not realise he leaked the info.
He will get a chance to defend himself in court though, yeah? Seeing as how breaching the Official Secrets Act is a criminal offence like.
TM says:
"provides compelling evidence suggesting your responsibility for the unauthorised disclosure."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48126671
By "responsibility" she might mean that as leader of the department which leaked it he is "responsible". Not that he actually did the leaking. (Although he obviously did. 🙂 ) So I guess it's possible to know the MOD leaked it and sack the boss, without knowing exactly who to pin the charge on.
Also 'suggesting' != "proves beyond reasonable doubt".
Be amusing if someone did get convicted over this leak but given nobody's claiming to know specifically who did it and nobody's claiming there's proof.
I had to chuckle at Tom Watson calling for prosecution on the Radio this morning. He accused Leon Brittan of being a peado and failed to provide his evidence to the Police. Now he's accusing someone of breaking the official secret's act and, again, not taken evidence to the police. I hope I never get mugged in front of Tom Watson, he'll be off to R4 when ideally I'd want him to dial 999. (Apart from that a top guy IMHO.)
I do wonder if Williamson is so dim that in the phone call to the journalist he gave out enough info that the journalist added 2+2 together. So Williamson himself does not realise he leaked the info.
Nice idea, I wouldn't bet against it. He was widely acknowledged as the second dumbest minister in the government.
The NSA does have form for tampering with network gear so they’re no better,
Or the dismay from across the pond is due to them not being able to snoop if we don't use Cisco or other NSA compromised equipment.
The Attorney General decides if an Official Secrets Act prosecution goes ahead in these circumstances. Interesting times in cabinet.
He’s apparently sworn ‘on his children’s lives’ that it wasn’t him or his staff.
Brave man trusting his children’s lives to his staff is all I can think.
Errr, I don't think if you swear on your kids lives and it turns out you're lying that your kids actually die.
Let's try it. "I swear on my kids lives that I'm making this post on Mumsnet, not Singletrack."
EDIT: Both still alive. Phew. It's almost as though "swear on my kids lives" means literally nothing.
The Attorney General decides if an Official Secrets Act prosecution goes ahead in these circumstances.
Someone has to report the crime and provide some evidence first. I suspect the only evidence is that he had a conversation on the particular day with the journalist who broke the story. Evidence enough to sack, but good enough for a prosecution? Probably not.
This isn’t about security. It’s about the proxy trade war between China and the US. Who’s side do we want to be on.
And he has to deny it, or he’s opening himself up to prosecution/jail.
I loved Laura Kunesberg's comment about this "my way or the Huawei". Thats the internet won for this week.
This isn’t about security. It’s about the proxy trade war between China and the US. Who’s side do we want to be on.
I suspect the timing of the sacking was about getting a 'Strong Prime Minister' story in the media on the day of the Local Elections.
This isn’t about security. It’s about the proxy trade war between China and the US. Who’s side do we want to be on
That's certainly part of it but yes it's also very much about security.
I loved Laura Kunesberg’s comment about this “my way or the Huawei”.
I'm waiting for "Huawei the lads!"
I suspect the timing of the sacking was about getting a ‘Strong Prime Minister’ story in the media on the day of the Local Elections.
Are you trying to say that Theresa May cares more about political expediency than she does about justice? I'm shocked!!!
How lobby journalists get their stories;
I’m sure that’s how it would have happened, whoever the leaker was, if it was Gavin Williamson, who we’ve all suspected it was in Westminster. We’ve done this for a while. That’s exactly how the conversations go. You don’t ring up a minister and say, ‘Will you leak this to me?’ You say to him, ‘”f I were to write, and I think that this happened, would I look particularly silly?” And then the minister says to you, “I don’t think you look silly, Tom, at the best of times”. And that’s the code we talk in. Or sometimes they say, “You do look particularly silly much of the time”. That’s the code. And that’s how it would have happened.
It takes a special kind of idiot to be sacked as a minister in a cabinet that also contains Chris Grayling
When you go around generally being as smug, smarmy and self-satisfied as Gavin Williamson clearly is, openly touting yourself as the next PM, bragging about how great you are at stitching people up using Machiavellian dark arts, then doing your frankly embarrassing international hard man act, then when people are looking for a scapegoat its surely inevitable that you're going to be pretty near the top of a lot of peoples hit-lists.
When you look at the present Tory front bench, its clearly going some to stand out as an even more odious little shit than the rest of them
I am at a loss to think of a more cringeworthy ministerial comment than 'go away and shut up', ever.
At least 'peace in our time' had a certain poetry to it.
How lobby journalists get their stories;
And as for swearing on the life of your kids, it's all a bit:
Ooh more network gear with back doors, better ban it from structural networks then.
Hang on it's Cisco again, as you were. Nothing to see here move along now.
Nothing to worry about here…
https://twitter.com/mrjamesmack/status/1124806934635450378?s=21
Add that to all the stories about him swinging a sword around the office. What the…?
He probably emailed it from his official parliamentary account
From his brand new Huawei handset.
I’m waiting for “Huawei the lads!”
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