Here’s a piece of advice.
If you’re a politician pushing for over-reaching national security legislation that could intrude upon the privacy of the citizens of your country, you might want to make sure that you have not made it possible for *anyone* to bombard your smartphone with messages – without having to know your number.
That’s a lesson being learnt the hard way by Australian attorney-general George Brandis, and other Australian politicians, who have been bombarded by unsolicited messages.
Why are people sending unsolicited messages to George Brandis’ iPhone? Because he has been pushing for a controversial data-retention law in Australia, which will force telecoms providers to store the metadata of all phone calls and internet usage for two years.
The new legislation will force telecommunications providers to store the metadata of all phone and internet users for two years, and – understandably – a lot of Australians aren’t happy.
For instance, a campaign kicked off inviting opponents of the legislation to cc: “Curious George” (at his government email address) on their online conversations if he’s so interested in seeing people’s communications.
Metadata can be immensely valuable to intelligence agencies, as while it may not reveal the details of what you said or wrote, it can still paint a surprisingly full picture of your private life.
And yet, governments argue that the information is harmless for them to collect – often making the comparison to the information stored on the outside of any envelope when a letter is sent.
Well, if it’s so benign, why do they have so much interest in collecting metadata?
The following slide from a presentation by the EFF’s Kurt Opsahl makes the point more eloquently than I could ever achieve:
Why Metadata Matters
* They know you rang a phone sex service at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don’t know what you talked about.
* They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
* They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance company in the same hour. But they don’t know what was discussed.
So, it’s perhaps easy to understand that folks down-under aren’t happy about this, and some have chosen to spam Senator Brandis’ iPhone via iMessage (which he had linked to his public email address).
In this case, Twitter user Lauren Ingram decided to message him the entire first chapter of George Orwell’s “1984”:
I'm messaging George Brandis the entire first chapter of 1984 @SenatorLudlam pic.twitter.com/P9iwNtEwMl
— Lauren Ingram (@laureningram) March 2, 2015
Yup, the entire chapter:
The fun didn’t last for too many hours, however. A later tweet from “1984”-messaging Ingram revealed that the politician had unlinked his email address from his iPhone:
Brandis has unlinked his email to iMessage. #1984toBrandis pic.twitter.com/ZHbfLojdVG
— Lauren Ingram (@laureningram) March 2, 2015
If you don’t want people to be able to send unsolicited iMessages to your iPhone, just by knowing your email address, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive on your iOS device, and choose how you wish to be reached.
You can see some more of the messages that were sent to George Brandis in this Buzzfeed article.