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Governments need to take record-keeping seriously in the digital age
Disappearing WhatsApp messages will be a problem for future historians.
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The ephemeral nature of the public Internet is mirrored by the fragility of digital record-keeping.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Stephen Bush
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Set your WhatsApp messages to auto-delete: Foreign spies might be reading them. That is the advice that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British signals intelligence agency, has given politicians after the British government publicly blamed China for two cyber campaigns against legislators and the country’s electoral watchdog.
Anyone who does business in Britain can be forgiven for a hollow laugh – Morgan Stanley was fined £5.4 million (S$9.2 million) by energy market regulator Office of Gas and Electricity Markets in 2023 for failing to keep records of communications between traders on WhatsApp.
