Downing Street disguise names of people they rubbish in e-mails
Downing Street disguise names of people they rubbish in e-mails
...some things I've picked up over the years.
1. Downing Street officials routinely disguise the names of people they are writing about in the belief that this may hinder attempts to get hold of them under FOI or secure under data protection legislation. So e-mails referring to me would refer to S*m C****s or a variation of this for instance. Who knows whether this does make any difference under the FOI law. It could do.
2. There are two linked e-mail systems. There's the secure system (where the address has .gsi in it) and then there is an unsecure system (without gsi in the address). Blackberries only have access to unsecure e-mails, although desktops inside number 10 have access to both. A lot of the more agressive stuff is done on blackberries.
3. The FOI procedure is pretty lax inside Number 10. When a request comes in, officials are asked to surrender any e-mails that might be relevant to the requester. I've been told in the past of occassions where officials simply to delete the more personally embarrassing ones. But, as far as I'm aware, there's no independent auditor inside the Cabinet Office or Number 10 who double checks that officials surrender everything they are legally required to. And, despite an FOI tribunal ruling to the contrary, deleted e-mails are considered out of bounds.
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