Robert Andrews

Downing Street Wiped the Phone Before Anyone Could Find It Scotland Yard has reopened its investigation into the reported theft of Morgan McSweeney's phone, the device that almost certainly contained the most direct evidence of how Lord Mandelson came to be appointed as Britain's ambassador to Washington. Detectives are examining CCTV footage from the Westminster street where McSweeney claims he was robbed on the evening of October 20 last year. They fear the footage will already have been deleted. It is usually stored for only three months. The investigation, in other words, has been reopened into evidence that may no longer exist. On the evening of October 20, McSweeney called 999 from Pimlico. He gave the wrong address. He did not correct the handler when the wrong address was read back to him. He did not identify himself as the Prime Minister's chief of staff. He did not mention that the device contained sensitive government material. The following day, a police officer called to ask whether McSweeney had tracked the phone using its built-in tracker. He did not respond. At some point between the reported theft and that unanswered call, Downing Street remotely wiped the device. This destroyed the tracker. The phone could no longer be located. The messages it contained could no longer be recovered. Now consider what did not happen. The Metropolitan Police were not informed that the missing device belonged to the Prime Minister's chief of staff. MI5 was not informed. GCHQ was not informed. The Information Commissioner's Office, which must by law be notified within 72 hours of any serious data breach involving personal information, was not informed. It told The Telegraph this week that it had received no notification at any stage. Set this against what was happening inside Downing Street at the same moment. Officials had been holding meetings to discuss what they would do if the Conservatives used parliamentary process to force the disclosure of McSweeney's messages with Lord Mandelson. The phrase used in those meetings, according to reports, was coming for Morgan's messages. Days after those meetings concluded, the phone containing Morgan's messages was reported stolen. Days after that, it was wiped. A prosecutorial mind, presented with this sequence, asks one question above all others. At the point when Downing Street chose to wipe the device, did anyone consider that doing so would destroy the tracker and make recovery impossible? The answer is yes. That is what remote wiping does. It is not a passive consequence. It is the purpose. There are innocent explanations available for most of what surrounds this affair. Wrong addresses happen. Unanswered calls happen. Notification failures happen. But the decision to wipe a missing government device, knowing that doing so would render it untraceable and its contents unrecoverable, at the precise moment when those contents were the subject of active parliamentary and legal scrutiny, is not a clerical error. It is a choice. And choices have authors. Keir Starmer has said he beats himself up over the Mandelson appointment. He has not said who authorised the wipe. He has not explained why the ICO was not notified. He has not said whether anyone in Downing Street attempted to track the device before wiping it. He has not explained why MI5 and GCHQ, the agencies whose job it is to manage exactly this kind of security risk, were kept in the dark. These are not difficult questions. They have simple, factual answers. A government with nothing to hide would have provided them already. The country is still waiting. "Keir Starmer has said he beats himself up over the Mandelson appointment. [...]. He has not explained why MI5 and GCHQ, the agencies whose job it is to manage exactly this kind of security risk, were kept in the dark."

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