Prime Hoax, CLI and the Comms Data Bill (aka Snooper’s Charter)

Last week the Downing Street switchboard put through a call from Robert Hannigan, director of GCHQ’s signal intelligence agency, to David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister. Except that it didn’t. What it did was connect someone that was, according to the Sun, “off [his] face on booze and cocaine” to the PM.

Now Cameron being a smart cookie, twigged as soon as the caller said “this is a hoax call” that the call was perhaps a tad dodgy and hung up before he could blow our spy network in the Middle East. Clever PM.

But you know, there’s this thing called Calling Line Identity that tells you who’s calling – you’d have hoped that someone might be screening incoming calls through a list of numbers eligible to be connected to the PM before doing what a crack addict or the KGB asks of you, wouldn’t you? If Voipfone can do it, you’d hope that the UK’s security services might have an outside chance too.

And these are the people that are asking us to trust them with ALL our communications data – internet browsing, email, voice calls, social media, gaming and messaging services. Do give over, David.