Oh dear. It’s safe to say that the Conservative party’s foray into WhatsApp hasn’t always been plain sailing. After MPs formed an official Tory MPs’ group on the encrypted messaging app to communicate with one another, many presumed their conversations would be secure. Alas this hasn’t proved to be the case – with the papers frequently filled with details of embarrassing exchanges on the group from bust-ups over Brexit to MPs outing each other for failing to understand what the customs union is.
Happily, a solution is on the horizon. In today’s i paper, Katy Balls reports that a number of Tory MPs are defecting to Confide – a “military-grade encryption” app with a self-destructing messaging system that deletes messages immediately after reading. The big plus is that even if an old foe has particularly quick reactions, you can’t take a screenshot on this system – so there’s no chance of your message being made public.
Aside from what it tells us about the state of the Conservative party that MPs see this as the preferred medium for liaising with colleagues, Mr S can’t hep but wonder what Amber Rudd will make of it. It was only last summer that the Home Secretary claimed that the level of encryption on WhatsApp was too much – ‘real’ people don’t always want ‘unbreakable security’ from their messaging app, she explained.
Presumably she won’t be partaking herself?
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