I cant say which department/s it was/is. Security is incredibly tight. But its not MI5 or anything like that :D A lot of civil servants mostly at the moment. But iv spoken to people you would put in that list. But not MP's or ministers. Although we were warned they might call if they wanted to. I guess they are too important and have too many assistants to deal with us directly :D

One of the locations i worked had an OG enigma machine i walked past every day. which was cool.

My security training lasted a week when i started. 3 strike rule enforced by security officers who would do occasional patrols arround the place. left pc unlocked, strike, printed something and left it at the printer because it was a mistake and didnt shread it. strike. left any documents on your desk at the end of the day not locked away. strike. 3rd strike was instant dismissal.

My security trainer told a story of when he went to his gym and over heard a guy talking to a fried about where he worked. (This was some time ago when people were not QUITE as concious about security as they should have been.) He didnt mention what he did. mention the place by name or too many specifics. But he could tell from some of the bits he did say that he worked in the building. So he waited for him to leave. took a note of the registration number of his car. Then when he got into work looked up his reg number which was recorded when he comes in the gates and cross referenced it with his security pass. Took his name and went and found his desk. He said he sat down next to him. introduced himself and asked him how how his session at the gym was. Which got a confused reaction. He didnt get a strike. But got given a sturn warning to be more carefull about exactly what he said in public places.

Iv worked IT helpdesks for years serving multiple different gov departments... They don't allow it. And you don't have access to install anything for the app store or the Apple store. If you want an app that isn't o365 stuff you have to request it be pushed to you. Iv never seen Facebook. Tiktok YouTube or anything like that present on a device. And you can't visit the web based versions because they are blocked by browsing policy's.

There must be more behind this headline than it initially reads. Something like changing wording on an outdated policy to define specifics or something like that. Unless they are singling out politicians who may be deemed too important to upset.

Iv worked on IT helpdesks for 3 different government agencies/departments in recent times. And currently do. You can't install twitter, Facebook, YouTube or pretty much anything unless you request it and it gets authorised and then pushed out to your device. You don't get access to ether the android or apple stores to download apps.

So there must be more to this than the headline let's on.