UK Foreign Sec Bojo to tell Kremlin: Stop your cyber shenanigans... or else! Foreign secretary Boris Johnson will warn Russia that the UK will retaliate against cyber attacks in a rare visit to Moscow today. Johnson will tell his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that "the UK will continue to defend its interests where they, and those of its allies, are threatened amid concerns that hostilities between …
Maybe in a tag-team with Liam Fox? Or even better with the 18th Century Throwback and Gove as part of the Brexiteers? We could all breathe so much easier if they were helping Kim Jong Eun with his transformation of North Korea into a UK-style state of mass surveillance.
I do wonder sometimes how hard the Russians laugh at us. .... Anonymous Coward
All the way to the bank, AC, is far enough for them to be able to take over and make over lead.
Boris is great entertainment, isn't he? A veritable latter day court jester and right crazy royal puppet on a string if one believes in all his flip flopping
Is Boris in danger of being recognised as a spider/trojan horse?
First of all, amazingly coherent post for a man from Mars
All the way to the bank, AC, is far enough for them to be able to take over and make over lead.
Second, you are 100% correct. I listened for 15 minutes to one of their talk shows on Boxing day before finally locating the remote at my mom's place to shut the GoggleBox. It was not RT, it was one of their proper channels and in Russian.
One of their commentators put it very bluntly - there is f*** all USA, UK or anyone else can do at this point short of an action which will be equivalent to a declaration of war. We are out of peaceful means to deal with their "interference". So are they by the way - they have tightened the bolts on us being able to pay for "independent" politicians staging "grassroot" "anticorruption" campaigns as far as they are willing to and there is very little they can do beyond that.
Next stage is we either figure out a way to de-escalate and have a proper adult conversation or we start the Tomahawk for Kalibr exchange.
Russia denies all accusations but its reputation when it comes to cybersecurity matters, such as banning VPNs or its use of cybercriminals in its spy operations doesn't do it any favours.
Weren't there blanket suspicions over VPNs voiced in Westminster of late? Then there's the constant background hum of mumbling about weakening encryption..?
While I respect GCHQs noble heritage, they are a hard nut and a pebble in the shoe to many foreign adversaries, in the soft trifle of British government IT they seem to be a mere plum stone, to be spat out and left on the side of the plate.
Use Cybercriminals....?
I think the UK can do one better, with the recent ECJ ruling on Snoopers Charter, the entire government colluded in an illegal piece of legislation.....!!!
Nevermind that, as things stand, all 'Black Hats' run the risk of being criminilised...
And Why Boris?
You know full well, the Secret Service will have to watch him 24/7, he'd go native in the drop of a hat, seduced with the furry hat and overcoats....
Boris has only one goal - the advancement of Boris. If (as I think most likely) it was Boris who pushed for himself to go to Russia it's either because he thinks there's some meaningful achievement he can take credit for or else he thinks it's a good photo-op. It also keeps him away from the debacle that is Brexit negotiations and stops too much of that contamination getting on him (he thinks, anyway).
Ensuring somewhere comfortable to live for Russian oligarchs?
London has certainly done much to help the homelessness of people with 10 digit size bank accounts*
Anyway I'm sure a blowzy haired buffoon Great Statesman such as Bozzer can bring some pesky furriner to his senses, even if he is fronting for a former KGB hood**
*allegedly.
**That's the Russian Foreign Minister to eliminate any ambiguity.
The more public outrage the UK government ("we") expresses at its geopolitical adversaries[1], the more you know "we" are doing whatever it is that outrages us. "We" are more outraged when "they" catch up with us than when "they" do something that's not in "our" repertoire.
[1] Including friends in the EU, as well as those like Russia to whom we're hostile at an official level.
They are only Outraged because they thought of it first, but hadn't gotten around to banning it*....
* The 'bad' regimes do it because they are restricting freedom, (and, well, bad). When the 'good guys' do it, they are ensuring the safety of the general public / figting terrorism / thinking of children....
Simple.
He's
a)A committed (well as committed as a journalist turned politician can be) Brexiteer and
b)A potential candidate for the next Conservative leader.
Outside the Cabinet he's not muzzled in any way from blatantly campaigning for the Leaders job (although he'd still need to call a General Election to be actually elected by the British people. And we all know how well that worked out for May) and generally b**ching about the whole process.
This way it's a case "Alright smart*** you've talked big about how much you want the UK to leave, you can start contributing to making it happen."
This usually is an effective management tactic for Ahole managers except where they have delusionally over inflated options of themselves.
That should have read
"except where they have delusionally over inflated opinions of themselves."
*Unless of course there is a futures market in peoples views of public figures that I don't know about. In which case I'd short Davis and go each way on Bozzer and Moggie.
He's.... A committed (well as committed as a journalist turned politician can be) Brexiteer
Sorry?
Even allowing for your caveat I thought that it was a well documented fact that he was as slavishly Europhile as the rest of the Thieves of Westminster? Admittedly there was that embarrassing episode where he pretended to be in favour of Brexit to advance his career, but let's face it, if you wanted a character to put people off voting for ANYTHING you'd have Bozza the Clown front the campaign for it.
Wot, don't you feel deep affection for his good natured hearty bluffness and general joie de vivre*?*
As for his Europhile credentials I'd suggest you check the stories he filed when he was the Telegraphs corespondent in Brussels, and how many of them were actually true.
In any case as Bozza learned in prep school one is either de-bagging the first years and shoving them down the toilet or one is being de-bagged etc.
So when the Conservative back benches form their lynch mob to hunt down those responsible for "Crimes Against Brexit" you can bet his reaction will be more "J'accuse*" than "Mea culpa*" :-(
*Apologies for offending any Leave voters by "talking foreign."
Did you know that Jill Stein is now being given the Stalinist show trial treatment for "collusion with Russia" (i.e. for stealing the votes that rightfully belonged to Hillary?)
I'm really having a jolly good time.
From the Democratskaya PravdaNew York Times:
Jesse Ferguson, a former Clinton campaign spokesman, said Americans ought to know if a presidential nominee, no matter how minor, had become a Russian asset or was simply boosted in an effort to chip away Democratic votes from Mrs. Clinton.
“Russian operatives were not promoting Jill Stein because they thought she would win,” Mr. Ferguson said. “They were promoting her because they thought it would hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.”
Maybe we can bring back public hanging/burning/whatever? What a time to be alive.
> They were promoting her because they thought it would hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump
This assertion is arithmetically correct.
In MI, PA and WI, Trump's margin of victory - counted in votes - is smaller than the number of votes Jill Stein received in each state. That is, without Jill Stein on the ballot, these votes would have probably gone to Hillary Clinton, and she probably would have won these states, and the Presidency.
Reference: 2016 Presidential Election Results Reference.
Donald Trump won 304 Electoral College votes. Hillary Clinton won 227 Electoral College votes. WI has 10 Electoral College votes, MI has 16 Electoral College votes and PA has 20 Electoral College votes. Do the simple math.
This isn't meant to excuse or justify Hillary Clinton's inept presidential campaign, its lack of ideas and her heavy-handed engineering of the DNC's bias towards her own candidacy.
As far as Stein and the Greens that has a much more Russian smell all over it.
The Russians have been extremely skillful in using Greens as a revenue assurance tool across Europe. Anti-fraking protests at the level which we saw over the last decade especially in Eastern Europe require LOTS of money - both direct and in the form of professional organization, lobbying and project management.
In some cases the money was traced. All legal. All above board. All in white, red and blue.
All in the interests of RosNeft and GasProm.
I am (genuinely) interested in any citations
Dig Bulgarian press (most of it is online and indexed by Google). Bulgarian knowledge will be required. Some of the sponsorship money there was traced back as the local laws did not prohibit it and it was perfectly above board.
Johnson turns up at the Kremlin and tells themj that he's bally miffed at all the lies and disinformation they were spreading during the brexit referendum campaign, as that was his job and we didn't want any bloody foreigners doing jobs a British person could do anymore.
And if they don't jolly well stop it, there'll be no more Premier League clubs for them, and he'll turn up in Moscow during their next presidential election and drive round in a bus saying "Vote Putin and get a gazillion roubles extra for the Russian Health Service every day and all the free vodka you can drink". That'll show them!
I'm not sure if Boris the Great can be referred to as an "it", cause only two legs (and a head between them). But maskirovka... sure, I get it: we sent him to Moscow so that the Russians would think we sent him as a decoy, when the real masters of UK are of a much, much more sophisticated disposition. But then, in the best trandition of Russian maskirovka / baba what (see above) we actually sent to Moscow, is a REAL deal, a genuine sample from the very core of UK's bestest ruling minds - thus totally confusing the Russians and beating them at their own game.
>>The UK doesn't give a damn about Russian gas. We get ours from Scotland and Norway.
We bought gas from Russia only last week. Because I suspect you'll quibble, I'll cite specifics. Novatek (a Russian gas producer) sold 170,000m^3 of LNG to Petronas LNG UK for distribution throughout the UK. It's a joint Russian-France-Chinese venture. Novatek is the majority share-holder.
I'm bound to say that I was irritated by your characterisation of our own Security Services as possessing somewhat toytown capabilities in terms of Cyber.
El Reg, of all people, should be well aware that the atlas of Cyber capability is very different to that of other forms of warfare. The Russians by no means have a monopoly on the means to cyber attack if necessary, and Boris Johnson has actually bee quite clever to remind them of that fact publicly.
And reading the predictable Boris Johnson attacks in the comments, I would point out that at least we have Foreign Secretary who is prepared to challenge the Russians on this subject, unlike in the US where the President seems more interested in openly criticising his own intelligence services for thier information on Russian cyber attacks before going to play another round of golf at Mar-a-Largo...
our own Security Services as possessing somewhat toytown capabilities in terms of Cyber.
Prolly not, no.
But unfortunately, largely directed by the 'town council of Trumpton*' located at Westminster.....now gone sadly quite mad in fear of it's own population...
Kind of a handicap...
* An old childrens TV reference, for those the other side of el atlantico, and not any reference to persons with a similar surname...
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