Prime Minister Dick Schoof has banned smartphones and other electronic devices from official Cabinet meetings. Ministers, State Secretaries, and other civil servants have to put their devices in a separate safe. “The threat of espionage is timeless and this was a completely self-evident measure,” the Prime Minister explained the measure before the Council of Ministers on Friday, NOS reports.

Schoof, formerly the head of the intelligence service AIVD, stressed that all “electronic devices” have microphones and that countries are interested in the decision-making of the Netherlands. “You must want to prevent that, so this is a very simple measure,” he said.

    • @[email protected]
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      526 days ago

      They also discuss security relevant stuff there wich is the actually important part. The members are allowed to speak about it, the security measures are against spies that hijack the phones.

      • @IsThisAnAI
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        -126 days ago

        The more realistic attack vector is insider threat or idiocy. That pin point I’m going to remotely activate a mic zero day is *mostly movie shit.

        • @[email protected]
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          325 days ago

          it’s literally standard for people’s phones to continually listen to them at this point, there have been several controversies about companies using microphones and speakers to do marketing research bullshit.

          if you think it would be difficult for another government to get into a phone that isn’t specifically engineered to be secure, i just hope you never get assigned any sort of responsibility.

          • @IsThisAnAI
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            -125 days ago

            🙄 Alexa is listening to me

    • WIZARD POPE💫
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      226 days ago

      Encase the conference room in a big faraday cage and obly allow pen and paper inside.