In setting the date for the UK’s next general election, prime minister Rishi Sunak this week essentially announced the start of open season for political reporters all hunting for the top scoop of the day by any means necessary. He may need, however, to brief his ministers on basic opsec if he’s going to stop any more internal memos from reaching the front pages.
On May 22, less than 24 hours before PM Sunak said July 4 would be the day UK citizens decide on their next leader, The Times published a gem sourced from photos taken of veterans’ affairs minister Johnny Mercer’s laptop on a public train.
It’s an example of shoulder surfing – a type of social engineering technique that involves peering at other people’s devices to discover secrets like passwords, PINs, sensitive emails, and the like.
We’re not sure what’s worse here, the cyber hygiene gaffe and abject failure to protect internal party comms from the prying eyes of the British public traveling from Exeter to London, or the fact that along with his laptop Mercer was papped with his bare feet cheesing out the first-class carriage. For shame, Johnny.
For those whose interests extend beyond the mere cybersecurity aspects of this story, the photos revealed Mercer’s memo criticizing Downing Street for giving the PM too much airtime and should instead be offering more public speaking gigs to more popular members of the Conservative party, such as Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt.
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Perhaps more illuminating on the current government’s attitude towards voting, Mercer also appeared to suggest that the Conservatives were suppressing votes from specific demographics.
His memo states that he was upset that his attempts to let military veterans, who had previously been turned away from polling stations, use their ID cards to prove their identity when voting had been denied. Downing Street special advisers apparently blocked these proposals because it could also “open the floodgates” and allow students to also use their ID cards too.
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We got in touch with the Cabinet Office to ask for comment and find out if ministers are briefed on the dangers of shoulder surfing, but it hadn’t responded by the time of publication.
While we wait for a response from the UK gov, we can instead turn to Mercer’s X account, which is where he responded to The Times’ scoop by calling the public transport snapper a “little weirdo.”
“So some little weirdo has gone round snapping my laptop reading private messages from a private email account,” Mercer Xeeted. "My shoes and socks were off because I’d just cycled across Dartmoor in the rain.
“Shoot me now. Or grow up.”
Reading the word Xeeted is going to be someone’s supervillain origin story
And he became Deteex the germy nemesis of the country’s cleanest superhero Dettolman.
Shouldn’t have had his laptop screen visible to anyone else. Knob end.
Hold on, military veterans are not allowed to vote?!?!
You wot?!?!
They are allowed to vote, but everybody now has to present a valid form of id when casting their vote.
The issue is there’s some kind of veteran card that’s not considered a valid form of id for things like this. In the same way that student id cards aren’t valid.
Sure as hell sounds like voter suppression to me!
Yet I’ll bet some random Home Counties bowling club taxi-discount members card blurry photocopy is high on the list of ‘acceptables’.
It’s not. They are largely sticking to the generally accepted official forms of ID - allowing military veterans to use their ID (which can currently only be used in specific contexts) would have opened the door to a whole range of other IDs, which is why this was all shut down.
So I had understood that from the publicity, basically passport, driving licence, or their special new national ID that’s definitely not a National Identity Card.
However, the list now includes lots of documents that only pensioners have, senior bus passes and 60+ rail cards etc. Since when was a buss pass a valid form of ID? It’s very weird.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/voter-id/accepted-forms-photo-id
Disabled bus passes as well.
And because anyone with these photo id bus passes has proven their identity to local government. In much the same way the voter id card will be confirmed. So why waste money checking again
Likely also they less likely to have a driving licence. So it helps reduce prejudice against those unable to drive. But that really dosent sound very tory.
Why would pensioners be less likely to have a driving licence?
Also it’s pretty clear tories are targetting their voters as no other bus passes are included or basically any IDs that would predominantly be carried by younger people.
Because at 70 they are required to renew every few years. Stating they have no issues effecting health.
The older you get the more likely you are to have health ans eye issues that prevent you driving.
They can vote but the Tories introduced voter ID to suppress groups that would tend not to vote for the right. It was suggested that military veterans could use their veteran IDs to vote and it was turned down because it would open the door to students using their IDs and they tend not to vote Tory.
I see. So no ID no vote, and the surveillance state wins again.
Pretty much. Veterans can use other forms of ID so they aren’t being discriminated against.
Seeing American politics mirrored in the country I fled to makes my teeth itch
They can vote. The article was saying they just can’t use their veteran cards as proof of identity
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In setting the date for the UK’s next general election, prime minister Rishi Sunak this week essentially announced the start of open season for political reporters all hunting for the top scoop of the day by any means necessary.
On May 22, less than 24 hours before PM Sunak said July 4 would be the day UK citizens decide on their next leader, The Times published a gem sourced from photos taken of veterans’ affairs minister Johnny Mercer’s laptop on a public train.
We’re not sure what’s worse here, the cyber hygiene gaffe and abject failure to protect internal party comms from the prying eyes of the British public traveling from Exeter to London, or the fact that along with his laptop Mercer was papped with his bare feet cheesing out the first-class carriage.
For those whose interests extend beyond the mere cybersecurity aspects of this story, the photos revealed Mercer’s memo criticizing Downing Street for giving the PM too much airtime and should instead be offering more public speaking gigs to more popular members of the Conservative party, such as Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt.
Last year, John Roch of London’s Metropolitan Police issued a warning about criminals shoulder surfing people entering PINs for their banking apps and then swiftly stealing the phone to drain their accounts.
Over in the US, Daniel Jermaine Usher, 26, of South Los Angeles, was previously found guilty of shoulder surfing elderly ATM users and draining their accounts, and while that’s undoubtedly nasty behavior, it’s still not as high profile as perusing secret government memos.
The original article contains 707 words, the summary contains 261 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
