“Ministers have been barred from wearing Apple Watches during Cabinet meetings amid concerns that they could be hacked by Russian spies,” Peter Dominiczak reports for The Telegraph.
“Under David Cameron, several cabinet ministers wore the smart watches, including Michael Gove, the former Justice Secretary,” Dominiczak reports. “However, under Theresa May ministers have been barred from wearing them amid concerns that they could be used by hackers as listening devices.”
“It comes amid mounting fears about the scale of Russian hacking in the West,” Dominiczak reports. “Concerns have been raised after hackers obtained confidential emails from the Democratic National Congress [sic Democratic National Committee] during the US election. Russian hackers have also obtained the medical files of some of the world’s most famous athletes.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s like a brief expository scene from a 1950’s Cold War sci-fi flick. “Dick Tracy had to remove his 2-Way Wrist Radio before entering the hallowed halls of…”
To be fair, mobile phones are banned as well, so it’s not specifically an Apple watch thing, it has just been added to the list.
And it’s not just about Russian spies. It’s just not polite to talk about worrying that your friends are spying on you too.
More importantly, UK government argues that only them and the USA have the right to spy over everybody.
Oh so you mean that they should welcome Russian spying on their activities? Do you think the Russians would agree a mutual non spying pact then or should we simply go unilateral? Glad you are NOT the leader of the West… or for that matter the even Cabinet Room teaboy making such childish remarks.
Everybody spies on everybody, but the USA and the UK is on top on this. So it is weird to see the outrage over Russian spying.
I am not hearing Kremlin goes into such fake outrage hysteria about spying and hacking that is done against Russia, even though Kremlin’s site is attacked multiple times a day from USA’s and UK’s IPs, let alone from IPs from other countries that are used as proxies.
Maybe Russians are better at hacking than at spying, so we see more leaks that supposedly came from Russians. Or not, as there is no real evidence that the hacks are tied to Russian government, so DNI’s report makes assertions with “we believe” and “consistent with” which are a code words for “we do not know but we really want to deflect from the content of the leaks and want to help with Clinton’s neo-MacCarthyist campaign”.
Example of “evidence” they have got: the alleged hacker once used a French IP that was also once rented by a global VPN provider, headquartered in Russia — and it was not even during the hack itself. Anyone could have used both the VPN provider or the French IP address that is for rent to anyone. Six degrees of separation “evidence”, so no wonder the DNI can not lie as brazenly and have to use suspicions over speculations or, if you will, speculations over suspicious argument.
And here I thought the Russian hacking noise is so “someone” can call foul if the election is won by that other party.
I think it’s insanity as the watch isn’t connected when the iPhone is not present
The only way it makes sense is if Theresa May’s deeply divided government ministers just don’t trust each other, as you can use a Watch without an iPhone to record sound, so the fear has to be that at least one minister is not to be trusted and may go to the media about one of that government’s appalling policies. So I don’t see this as anything about security, I see it as a weak government trying to protect itself from itself.
Okay, let’s call it what it really is.
“amid concerns that they could be hacked by (Vladimir Putin’s government)”
Announcing: The Age Of Justified Code Paranoia
Likely, paranoia regarding Apple gear security is largely unjustified.
HOWEVER, we are amidst a vast catastrophic mess of hacking of crap software all over the planet and hacking of human minds. Social engineering works. Being afraid of all things coded is sadly an inevitability. The tables have turned such that people now think:
“PROVE to me that you’re secure!”
…Rather than simply expecting their gear and programs to be secure. Under the circumstances, I can’t blame average folks for this new paranoid point of view.
The milestone: Yahoo having 500 MILLION accounts hacked and not telling anyone for FOUR YEARS… AND that hacking being tangled up with UNCONSTITUTIONAL surveillance of Yahoo mail clients via the NSA in cooperation with worthless FISA courts and the blatantly EVIL and insecure actions by Yahoo executives.
IOW: The Yahoo/FISC/NSA hack was the last straw.
Benefits:
– Stemming the flow of not-ready-for-prime-time Internet of Things crapola.
– The death of Microsoft Windows. (We wish!)
– The death of Android. (We wish!)
– The re-ascension of UNIX based operating systems. (Hello macOS & other forms of BSD!)
– Security at long bloody last moved to the top of coding priorities.
– The tossing of the old, impossible-to-code-securely programming languages. (Bye-bye C and derivatives!)
– The arrival of programming languages with actually safe and competent memory management built-in. (Hello Swift!)
Please add to the list or offer your own name for this brave new world face plant.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=face%20plant