Defence Personnel Data Breach
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Secretary of State’s Statement. In the remark he just made, he illustrated the real dangers presented to military personnel with the release of addresses into the hands of a hostile state—a malign actor, as we have been told—which undoubtedly will compromise the safety of military personnel, past and present. It also, of course, endangers national security and is of a piece with the espionage and other cybercrimes to which some of us, even here in Parliament, have been subjected.
Can the Minister tell us whether, in this instance, the private contractor entrusted with this data will be brought before the Intelligence and Security Committee to explain exactly what happened? This should not simply be subject to an internal review. How many other private contractors currently hold Ministry of Defence data? If and when this hack is attributed to the People’s Republic of China, as was briefed by the Government yesterday morning, will the state entities responsible be sanctioned and not merely individual hackers? Are we in touch with our Five Eyes allies to co-ordinate a comprehensive and effective response safeguarding our national interest and, in this instance, our service personnel?
The noble Lord raised a number of very important points. It is difficult to comment on them because of the ongoing investigation and the sensitivity around it. In respect of his request that the supplier is brought before the committee, that is certainly a reasonable suggestion that I will take back to the department.
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Deepfakes: General Election
My Lords, given the use of deepfakes and malign disinformation facilitated by data theft, has the noble Viscount taken note of what the Biden Administration decided to do last week? The President signed into law the ability to ban TikTok, and the Chinese-owned company that owns it, because of America’s experience in the mid-term elections in 2022 and the elections in Taiwan earlier this year. Does the Minister not worry that, unless we take similar powers in the United Kingdom, the same thing will happen here?
Well, some of the enforcement measures under the Online Safety Act do allow for very significant moves against social media platforms that misuse their scale and presence to malign ends in this way, but of course the noble Lord is absolutely right and we will continue to look closely at the moves by the Biden Administration to see what we can learn from them for our approach.
