LONDON - Phone numbers and other personal details of senior ministers from Britain's Conservative party were made public by an app security flaw on Saturday, including those of top Brexiteers Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
Several top MPs reportedly received nuisance calls after their profiles were accessed on the official mobile application for the annual party conference, which kicks off this weekend.
The security breach saw members of the public able to enter the profiles using just the politicians' email addresses -- easily available online -- to view and edit the data stored within.
Former foreign secretary Johnson had his profile picture briefly swapped for pornography and his job title changed to an profane insult, according to several Twitter users.
Meanwhile Environment Secretary Gove's picture was changed to one of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, his former employer when he was a journalist.
Among the first to report the flaw was Dawn Foster, a columnist for daily The Guardian.
"The Tory conference app allows you to log in as other people and view their contact details just with their email address, no emailed security links, and post comments as them," she wrote on Twitter, using a colloquial name for the party.
"They've essentially made every journalist, politician and attendee's mobile number public. Fantastic."
A Conservative party spokesperson apologized for the breach, saying the technical issue had "been resolved and the app is now functioning securely".
Britain's data watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), said it was investigating the data breach related to the app, which was developed by an Australian firm called Crown Comms.
The opposition Labor Party said the blunder showed the ruling party could not be trusted in matters of security.
"They can't even build a conference app that keeps the data of their members, MPs and others attending safe and secure," said shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett.
The breach is the latest embarrassment for Prime Minister Theresa May's embattled party, whose yearly gathering begins on Sunday in the city of Birmingham in central England.
Last year's conference was peppered with mishaps, with May's attempt to move past Brexit splits marred by a protest, a collapsing set and a coughing fit.
During the 2017 event, a prankster interrupted the leader's address by handing her a P45 -- a form given to those leaving a job.
No sooner had she resumed, May began coughing uncontrollably and continued to struggle on and off throughout the rest of the speech, as 2 letters fell off the slogan on the wall behind her.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LONDON - A senior British minister on Sunday defended the government's plan to adopt EU rules on goods after Brexit, amid anger from MPs who want a cleaner break and concerns it will still harm business.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, a leading Brexit supporter, admitted the proposal thrashed out by cabinet ministers during a day-long meeting on Friday was not perfect.
But he told the BBC: "I'm a realist", adding: "All of the important areas where an independent country chooses to exercise sovereignty, Britain will be able to do so."
He stressed that Britain was leaving the European Union as planned in March, adding: "You shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good."
Prime Minister Theresa May said that after agreeing a common approach, she now expected years of ministerial in-fighting on Brexit to end.
But Sunday's newspapers were full of reports of rebellion within her Conservative party.
"There is a lot of unhappiness," eurosceptic MP Bill Cash told Sky News television, questioning if the proposal would lead to a "proper Brexit".
On the other side of the debate, more than 100 British entrepreneurs and business leaders said the plan was not enough to avoid disruption, and urged Britain to stay in the EU's customs union.
Dutch electronics giant Philips also warned that any changes to current free trade agreements posed a "serious threat" to the competitiveness of its British operations.
JOHNSON'S CRITICISM
May's plan would create a free trade area with the EU for goods, to protect supply chains in areas such as manufacturing, while maintaining flexibility for Britain's dominant service sector.
It is unclear whether Brussels will accept this, after repeatedly warning Britain it cannot "cherry-pick" bits of its single market.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit supporter, was widely reported to have described the plan as a "turd" before agreeing to support it.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said it appeared to run contrary to promises to leave the EU's single market and customs union.
"If the public perceive that not to be delivered then the government, I'm afraid, will suffer the consequences at the next election," he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
BUSINESS WARNINGS
The opposition Labor party, by contrast, said the plan was "unworkable" and urged MPs to back Britain's continued membership of the customs union, which will be put to a vote in the House of Commons on July 16.
A group of entrepreneurs, including the founders of Innocent Drinks, food chain Pret a Manger, bookshop Waterstones and fashion retailer Net-A-Porter among others, urged them on.
"The cost, complexity and bureaucracy created by crashing out of the customs union and adopting alternative arrangements is the last thing that our businesses need as we seek to grow," they said in an open letter reported in The Times.
Philips meanwhile became the latest firm to publicly warn about a break in EU-UK ties, after Jaguar Land Rover, BMW and Airbus all spoke out.
The Amsterdam-based group employs around 1,500 people in Britain, most notably at its baby care products-for-export factory in Suffolk.
"I am deeply concerned about the competitiveness of our operations in the UK, especially our manufacturing operations," chief executive Frans van Houten said in a statement to AFP.
"We estimate that the cost of the (Philips') exported products will increase substantially under any scenario that is not maintaining the single customs union," he said.
He added: "We need to do worst case scenario planning."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
