1 yr. ago • 100%

Key Boris Johnson aide set key WhatsApp group to auto-delete

www.opendemocracy.net Key Boris Johnson aide set key WhatsApp group to auto-delete

Martin Reynolds turned on the setting as plans for the official probe took shape, inquiry hears

The WhatsApp group, called ‘PM Updates’, contained Boris Johnson’s closest advisers and discussions within the group touched on key Covid policies – such as shielding the clinically vulnerable, and the Department of Health and Social Care’s plans for responding to the pandemic.

But as plans for the inquiry took shape, Martin Reynolds – Johnson’s principal private secretary at the time – set the group so that messages sent would vanish after a period of time. It means potentially key discussions that took place are unavailable as evidence.

12 comments

So destruction of evidence? Obstruction of justice? Any of the typical charges for this stuff if your average Joe were to pull this kind of stunt?

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- Average joe would be in trouble for just using whatsapp or email for government business. It is against the rules of any government department I ever worked with. Never mind deleting the evidence.
  
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- -16
  
  I can't believe I actually have to say this.
  
  You are not a government official, working in a professional capacity having conversations with your collegues about the job you're doing.
  
  Your personal discord, etc, is completely irrelevant.
  
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  Permanently Deleted
  
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We should stop end to end encryption, and also we use deleting messages in WhatsApp...

Our government

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So a top government official was smart about digital communication? Why is this a story?

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I see this as analogous to having a telephone conversation that isn't recorded. I don't really see a problem with that, other than whatever legal requirement there is to record and secure government communications. I doubt the obligation to record extends to every single discussion that takes place in the halls of government or by phone. Obviously it looks dodgy as hell though.

Another way of saying it is that I don't think you need to record every single whatsapp message sent in government during the early Covid days to know that they completely fucked it. Their actions demonstrate they completely fucked it. Their public statements demonstrate they completely fucked it. The number of deaths in care homes, the overwhelming of the NHS, the fact that they were late late late for everything, the fact that the entire country had more or less voluntarily decided to stay indoors well before the official lockdown started, the shortage of masks and PPE, the billions of public funds given away to their friends and fraudsters -- so many things show they completely fucked it. You don't need to know every god awful thing they said or did in private to know they completely fucked it, because they so clearly and so publicly fucked it.

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- other than whatever legal requirement there is to record and secure government communications.
  
  So you do see the problem.
  
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