Today has been badged as #dataprivacyday which is an international attempt to encourage people to improve their online and wider cyber security. There is a website which includes plenty of information and it is clear all of us could do much more to help secure our identities. One group of people who need a great deal of help in this regard do not take kindly to being challenged in their behaviour, even when they have made outrageous statements in public. They are not unique to the UK and no doubt exist outside of the USA as well. Over the last couple of years it has emerged how first Hillary Clinton and then Donald Trump had been using privately owned computers to handle emails containing top secret government owned information. Then a few weeks ago when the Government was under pressure due to the pornography that had been found on Damien Greens computer, about 9 years ago, two of his colleagues plus a BBC producer got onto twitter to point out that like most of the 650 MPs in the House of Commons, Damien would have shared his password amongst his whole office, including to any unpaid interns if the tweet of Nadine Dorries are to be treated with any credibility. As a result of these tweets I created this Parliamentary petition back in mid December asking the Government to carry out an audit for all MPs and Peers that would ensure that every office in the Palace of Westminster was reviewed from the point of view of data privacy. So far a massive number of 40 people have signed it, I hope that today this might change in relative terms.

The point of this petition is not simply about trying to protect the reputation of people like Nadine Dorries and Nick Boles, but much more importantly it may protect the identities and secrets of thousands of constituents across the UK. If you want to see the tweets and read a bit more about the comments my blog here explains matters further, and this blog from a few days later explains one recent example where the Houses of Parliament came under cyber attack as disclosed by Henry Smith MP.