Electoral Commission hid details of a huge hack for a year, yet still tight-lipped

The Electoral Commission, the watchdog responsible for overseeing elections in the United Kingdom, confirmed in August that it had been targeted by “hostile actors” that accessed the personal details — including full names, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers and any personal images sent to the Commission — on as many as 40 million U.K. voters.

While it may sound like the Electoral Commission was upfront about the cyberattack and its impact, the incident occurred in August 2021 — some two years ago — when hackers first gained access to the Commission’s systems. It took another year for the Commission to catch the hackers in the act. The BBC reported the following month that the watchdog had failed a basic cybersecurity test around the same time hackers gained entry to the organization. It has not yet been revealed who carried out the intrusion — or if it is known — and how the Commission was breached.

Source : https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/29/badly-handled-data-breaches-2023/?guccounter=1

Looking on Facebook this morning it appears that various places roundabout us have had power cuts due to Storm Pia overnight. I remove my hearing aid at night and hear nothing at all – not even the doorbell which is right outside my bedroom door. So I heard nothing, but by the time I got up it was, and remains, no windier than many another day when we have no met Office warnings of any sort.

My OH got a letter from HMRC – Income Tax – this morning asking if she was claiming certain things – “Home Responsibilities Protection” – as far back as 1978 !!! We have a job to remember what we did yesterday, and what we have got to do today, never mind 45 years ago ! Since my OH is happily computer illiterate I have done as bidden in the letter, found out what on earth it is all about, and using an online “Checker” have ascertained that the whole thing does not apply to her. She is now worried that she ought to phone someone to ell them. I tell her that were she eligible for this protection she would apply, and if she is not she does nothing, but (and here I agree with her) she feels that doing nothing is not satisfactory and that she should do something positive.

It seems we are not entirely forgotten ! The card at the top left – a family group – is from a friend who is 100 years old . . .

The builders were here all week to Friday and finished off the last bit today once the rain stopped. The new TV aerial works a treat and our bank balance looks a bit unhappy. The good thing about the whole operation was that all the tradesmen were very decent chaps and were a pleasure to have about the place. The TV man, who we have had here before, had to trundle in and out quite a bit, but we had a good chinwag with him and he set up the TV set to find all sorts of channels that we know nothing about and probably will never use.

Today the DPD van arrived but we had no idea what he was here to deliver. It turns out to be a bumper bundle from Bettys of all sorts of goodies sent by our son and his partner from Lincolnshire.

After four days of continuous and sometimes very heavy rain we have a glimpse of the sun. The builder has arrived with it and had commenced work on knocking off the old, failing, render on our chimney in order to replace it. The TV aerial and wiring is up there too and will have to come off. He says the wiring in buried in the render at one point.

Having knocked off a great deal of the render it now becomes apparent that the brickwork underneath is in poor shape, so it looks as though the chimney will be best taken down and the roof and chimney remnant made good. This will cost us more, but will be a better job when finished.

I was born at the end of 1933. Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany back in January, so I feel a sort of proprietorial interest in him and his times. A good way to find out about those times is to read what German citizens of the time and others resident in Germany, wrote about it. You find that many people did not take much interest in political affairs or what the Government was doing, and simply got on with their own lives as that process occupied them most of their time. Others knew what Hitler stood for and intended to do and thoroughly approved of some of it at least. Some knew about the rounding up of “undesirables” and agreed, some were not comfortable with it, some remained in ignorance. But there were many who were glad that Hitler repudiated the punitive terms and conditions of the Versailles Peace Treaty so that the economy picked up and jobs became available with decent wages – a new thing for many. When Hitler plunged the citizenry into large scale war, and that war dragged on, the scales began to fall from their eyes and the realisation of what they had let themselves in for dawned.

It seems to me, now an old man, that we are in a similar position. We have a right wing Government prepared to cosy up to the populist element in our National life. “Immigrants” are the cause of all our troubles and have replaced the Jews of Hitler’s time. Too scared, or too sensitive to build centres of elimination in our own country they have come up with the idea of deporting them to another – in this case Rwanda. It seems to be taken for granted that this will happen, by fair means or foul, but there has been very little discussion or explanation about what Rwanda thinks about this. They are, after all, being treated as a dumping ground and our Government behaves as though they have some inbuilt right to do this. It is as though the independence of the various African nations never happened and it is permissible to treat them as if they were still dependant Colonies of the UK.

And as for the immigrants coming ashore at or near Dover, their opinion is not asked for, nor is the possibility that they might have pinions ever considered. Nor is the possibility that they may have talents and abilities that might be of use here, nor the occasionally mentioned fact that demographically speaking, we need a constant supply of younger active people for a variety of jobs – many of those in health care and care of the elderly.

But, as in Hitlers day, I see no public outcry about this deportation process. Once again it is either not known about, or just something the Government is doing – nothing to do with us – and only a few voices emerge from time to time to say that the whole thing is immoral, and quite probably illegal too under International Law. The Government response to that is to concoct doubtful, sinister, legislation which purports to put their actions outside such considerations.

So, we drift onwards to the next stage, where will this Government lead us, and what consequences will we find dumped on our doorsteps when it is too late for us to do anything about it ? I may well be dead and gone by then, but my grand children and great grand children will have to deal with the mess that we have made and with which we have saddled them.

All downhill from now on . . .

Today it was the DGRI. We were up early (too early for me) and ready for our taxi at 9.50 am. The weather was wet and forecast to get wetter (Yellow Warning for Rain from the Met Office) so it was a dark and, for the driver, miserable journey. But we arrived OK and began the great trek fro the car to the main entrance, then through the vestibule ( anti Covid hand disinfecting in force) to the reception desk and then through the “atrium” to Bay 2 of Outpatients. I tried to visit a toilet on the way but the floor was flooded -as in inundated – so I gave that up as a bad job.

We had a time of waiting in front of a TV screen with Boris Johnson giving evidence – actually not giving anything of use except a pack of evasions and lies I expect – and then my OH got called and we were off to see the Dermatological Consultant, a nice lady with and oriental appearance and a name to go with it. She did an examination and decided to take some biopsies, so my OH is now considerably inconvenienced when she goes to the convenience. But these things have to be done and there will now be a lengthy wait while they do whatever they do in the Labs and come to some sort of a conclusion.

Then there was the lengthy trek back again, but fortunately our taxi was waiting and we were soon speeding home in less traffic than there was at the earlier time.

Off to take OH to her Opticians appointment. Ha! think I, now I will go and fill the car up with petrol – the gauge was getting suspiciously low. I took my wheelie walker and a walking stick and used the stick to get out while I operated the pump. The car needed a lot of petrol so I was on my legs for some time. When the filling finished I made my way across the forecourt and into the shop and to the till which, for me, was quite a long walk. Having paid I made my way back to the door using the stick and their sweet shelves for support, but once I got outside I was quite unable to launch myself off and cross the forecourt back to the car. I have had labyrinthitis for a couple of weeks but it usually only affects me at night when I get up out of bed, and when I lie down again. It was quite a frightening situation (correction : very frightening) and goodness knows what would have happened had a young man appeared out of nowhere and helped me across the void back to the car. He looked at me very oddly and no doubt wondered if I was should be in charge of a car. But the thing was, as soon as I sat down, I was OK again and able to carry on. However, there was one other job I wanted to do – to take the glass to the bottle bank, but I decided against this, found somewhere to park, and did puzzles in my puzzle book.

At one point I looked up only to find that I was blocking an entrance, so I hurriedly fired up the car and took it for a bit of a run as It only does very short journeys adding up to less than two miles at a time. When I returned I went to the Opticians to see if my OH was finished yet, but got told that she had had drops in her eyes and would be another 20 or 30 minutes ! So off I went and parked again. By this time the sun had gone down, so I kept the engine running for a while and kept the heater going. Eventually I got back to the Opticians, my OH was ready and came out, and announced she wanted to do some shopping !!!

We awoke to this – it was forecast yesterday to be like this today – and although the temperature is supposed to be just above freezing point, the snow has remained pretty much unchanged all day. The forecast temperatures, day and night, for the next few days (I speak of Kirkcudbright) remain positive in the main and by Monday the midday temperature is shown as 5˚C.

No doubt the public roads will be well salted and clear, the side roads somewhat less so, and for us, the most difficult bit would be that between the front door and the car, so unless some emergency arises, I think we shall sit tight until nature has taken its course.