FFS Jack we all know to use fake info for DOB mother maiden name etc so to stop the old i forgotten my password ruse from working.

any evidence of his son still using the weed ?

From:Son

To:Dad

Can you lent me 35 so I can get a quarter of green.

You can mark it down as bulbs for second home on your expenses.

your son.

"We are checking all that and I am assured there's no evidence that confidentiality of constituents was affected,"

Well apart from their email addresses no doubt being syphoned off so they can be sent more spam.

why the hell is he using hotmail, i would have thought that he would have had j.straw@labor.org or blackburn@labour.org. hasn't the labour it department heard of exchange (or dare i say it, gmail). where is the professionalism in using hotmail, if i see an advert for a company that uses a non company based email address (if they have a website i think its even worse) i will not deal with them because it looks like they dont give a s***.

Who is frankly aghast that a "Snr Politico" uses a bleedin' hotmail account to conduct serious Constituency business???

What was his password "IWASGOD"? Seems appropriate for a former Home Sec!

Pirates... well... goes without saying. All Straw needs is a peg leg and a Parrot.

"no evidence that confidentiality of constituents was affected"

Except that their email address are now being spread around spammer groups!

I assume he either had a very simple password, or had real questions and answers in his security questions - yes really stupid for a high profile email address in the public domain, but not surprising.

But what a waste though! Imagine the fun that could have been had with this in the right hands. They probably didn't even know whose email it was...

Shame they didn't make better use of the opportunity to send encrypted information from his account (with an incriminating title) and then alert the authorities. This would allow Jack Staw's much beloved RIP Act to be used against him when he can't provide the keys to decrypt the contents.

A nice spell in the slammer may give him time to reflect on the potential for the abuse of such ill-conceived legislation.

I doubt that they did. More likely to have been a phishing victim, and that it was just one of many hacked accounts.

"no evidence that confidentiality of constituents was affected"? No evidence that it wasn't either probably.

A matter for the Information Commissioner? I'd be concerned if my MP or his staff was so casual about data security.

> "I am assured there's no evidence that confidentiality of constituents was affected"

So having a crap audit trail is a GOOD thing????

If the audit trail was any good he would be able to say "I am assured the evidence shows that confidentiality of constituents was not affected". That's not what he said.

(He's a politician; you have to read his words very carefully because politicians have been known to try to mislead without actually getting caught in a lie. See e.g. Bill "I did not have 'Sexual Relations' with that woman" Clinton - where 'Sexual Relations' was defined in the lawsuit & didn't include BJs).

"It was an issue for constituents, not the Government. We are checking all that and I am assured there's no evidence that confidentiality of constituents was affected," the former Home Secretary told The Telegraph."

Considering this account is the one advertised for constituents to use, I'd say that their confidentiality *was* affected - although one suspects the Lads from Lagos don't have too much interest in the state of the paving stones in Blackburn town centre.

Anyone interested in reporting this to the ICO?

Am I really the first to comment on this?

WHAT THE FECK IS A MINISTER DOING USING HOTMAIL FOR HIS CONSITUENCY EMAIL ACCOUNT??

The same thing happened to a friend over the Christmas period. He said that he had an email that said his account needed something doing. He clicked on the link and it asked for username and password. We suddenly had an email saying that he was stuck in Nigeria, even though I spoke to him just a few days earlier. He was not really computer literate, however, he has now stopped using email completely. There is no way for him to really get the account back.

I'm seeing emails from hacked Hotmail accounts very regularly nowadays (sadly, not from Jack Straw though). Insufficient password strength, malware or other?

They actually let people who use hotmail be in charge of stuff?

Of all the people you'd *want* to get stuck in Nigeria...

In 1997 when Labour took office, they seemed to be very switched on regarding email security, even at cabinet level (I was a DoH civvy), so why the fuck is Jack Straw still using hotmail? OK, so all his consituency office staff probably have the password, but the party must, surely, have an email infrastructure that allows for each constituency, even ward, party to have its own address, even if it goes to a shared mailbox.

And to think these were the people who brought you the Excalibur rapid rebuttal database.

How apt that the UK Justice Secretary receives some rough justice of his own from the Lads from Lagos !!!

I reiterate the utter astomishment of previous posters on the use of a public e-mail account (hotmail) by a sitting member of government - WTF was he thinking ? Didn't the Sarah Palin e-mail incident ring any alarm bells ? And if not with him, then with someone who has an inkling of an idea on how to protect constituency, party and governmental information ?

Rather that stashing any any corrospondence about previous company directorships, company directorships they are planning to take when they "Retire," or how they plan to get their mate out of that embarrasing tax/sex/land development/stock fraud investigation that is really a big misunderstanding and its not what you think honest.

I'm shocked. Truly shocked.

The scammers really missed a trick here.

"Send $10,000 by Western Union, or we'll send him back."

Yes, having a crap audit trail is a good thing if the first question you asked when the problem was found was "Can anyone prove we've given away lots of confidential information?"

Having a crap audit trail is a bad thing if the first question you asked when the problem was found was "Will this be a problem for any of my constituents and is there anything we can do to minimise the damage?"

Guess which question is more important to a politician?

Does Mr Straw have a presence on Facebook by any chance?

The reason I ask is because I know 3 people (my wife included) who all had this happen to them and the one thing they had in common was that they all stupidly used the same email address with their Facebook account and used the same password to log into both.

Not that I'm saying Facebook is insecure or anything.

Like good ol' Sarah Palin, the lack of GOVERNANCE here by Jack.

On 28 June 2007 he was appointed to the offices of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Secretary of State for Justice (Wikipedia)..... now I have to ask how the fuck anyone in such a position can be permitted to conduct business using a public webmail account of any kind.

We don't even allow our lowest-ranked staff to do that and they know and understand the reasons behind the policy. And we're just white collar numpties!!

How is he complying with electronic archiving requirements? Accountability? Transparency?

Is a vote for nuLabour in Blackburn effectively a vote for the Monster Raving Loonie Party?

Paris - because she conducts official business on video camera. Now that's transparency!