I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, I truly despair.
Sunday Times reporting Cummings had long been ‘haunted by fear he could end up in prison: either over irregular spending during Brexit referendum or his conduct in govt’
Why despair? Because @shahmiruk did forensic capture witnessed by lawyers of Vote Leave’s Google drive. That showed apparent deletion of key evidence by Vote Leave after Electoral Commission launched an investigation.
That’s not an electoral offence. It’s a serious crime. 2/
That evidence was passed to NCA. That’s separate agency than Met which investigates electoral offences - the old Special Branch dept that investigates politically sensitive crimes.
The Met shut down all investigations into Brexit-related crimes. The NCA never reported back
3/
This is the deletion log from the drive. On March 1, 2017, the Electoral Commission opened investigation.
On March 17, Vote Leave deleted itself from 140 files which showed evidence of an electoral offence being committed 4/
Why am I bringing this up now? For 2 reasons. We showed all the evidence to Gavin Millar QC before publication & he said: ‘Someone is going to jail & not for a short time’
It was evidence in his view of perversion of the course of justice
5/
To our knowledge the police never even opened an investigation into this.
The other newspapers never picked it up. The BBC never reported it. Shahmir was smeared. The whole thing sank without trace.
But if Sunday Times is right, Cummings had good cause to be scared.
6/
Secondly, if you think any of the scandals we are currently seeing will ever be investigated, think again.
The Met’s special investigations unit is not fit for purpose. And the NCA is..well, who knows? @NCA_LynneOwens, you want to tell us what happened? 7/ .
Tweet of the day
When Line of Duty’s @jed_mercurio thinks there’s a problem..
More here from @sarah_donaldson the @ObserverUK who edited & oversaw this incredibly difficult & legally contentious reporting into print:
I might just spend today repeatedly pointing out that the illegal campaign donations Cummings, Gove & Johnson were involved in were also 'very serious'.
But they weren't 'allegations'. They were findings in law. Which not a single journalist has ever asked them a single q about
This is how the BBC reported the story. It allowed @matthew_elliott to leak the findings ahead of the official regulators’ report & falsely frame its findings
The BBC & specifically @bbclaurak is at centre of this spat about who leaked what to whom. And given possible illegal campaign donations are under scrutiny again, it’s surely, finally, time to interview @shahmiruk?
2 years ago today. My view waiting to go on stage at TED. Minutes later, a full-blown panic attack.
Speaking out has been both blessing & curse. Forever grateful to @TEDTalks for the platform. But I also live with the shadow. Banks’s lawsuit. Still ongoing. Shit goes on
To those who of you terrified of public speaking, let me tell you: overcoming it is like..well, taking heroin? Crack cocaine? I was stone cold sober here (with @Moonalice the first person to greet me off stage & TED’s @CyndiStivers). And totally off my tits on utter sheer relief
Anyway apologies for the self-indulgence but it’s amazing to remember how ‘out there’ it was in 2018 to warn that Facebook was destroying democracy when that is literally now the entire mainstream press. Welcome to my TED talk. (Lol)
Wow. This is...significant. US Treasury has picked up the trail on Kilimnik, a Russian agent who passed Cambridge Analytica polling data from Trump campaign to Russia in 2016 & is now wanted for his role in 2020 election.
If you want to understand how this connects to Britain, start here. It’s long. It’s complicated. And in Britain, it is totally & utterly uninvestigated
Fascinating conversation live now with the leading experts on this new Facebook data dump including @intidc for first reported it, former FTC tech lead @ashk4n & the security researcher who first found it @UnderTheBreach
The timing of it and when & if Facebook reported this to FTC is absolutely critical, says @ashk4n. He also says his private telephone number that he only uses for 2-factor verification and has never been public is in the data breach
The idea that Facebook 'fixed' this problem in Aug 19 is so absurd. As @ashk4n says the data dump, which is still sitting on the open net, is 'the perfect harassment tool'
I’ve been tweeting about latest Facebook breach because it seems to show it’s learned nothing since Cambridge Analytica. It’s refused to answer basic press inquiries. And now, it’s pulled out rest of Cambridge Analytica playbook. This isn’t FB’s fault. It’s ‘malicious actors’ 1/
Facebook failed to keep safe the data of half a billion people. But this isn’t a data breach, it’s ‘scraping’. Which is *exactly* how Facebook responded to me & @_EmmaGH in 2018.
That wasn’t a data breach either. Until it was. 2/
This is the playbook. Ignore, minimise, deflect, re-frame. Here’s the response of @intidc, an actual (ethical) hacker who reported this *exact security flaw* in 2017. Instead of fixing the breach, Facebook blamed it on its users. 3/
Last week, @nick_clegg published 5,000 words of pro-Facebook propaganda & did big interview to promote. But Facebook’s only response to massive data breach of 1/2 billion accounts has been to claim the breach is ‘old’. Everything about this is fucked up 1/
This is a massive breach of incredibly sensitive information. When was reported on Friday & FB’s comms people took to Twitter to say this breach was ‘old’ & had been ‘fixed’ in August 2019. And since then..nothing. Not a word. 2/
Facebook - like all companies - has an obligation under GDPR to tell the regulator & inform users. Users like @zamaan_qureshi are discovering their data is in there. But FB never said a word.