Boris Johnson's mobile phone 'seized by MI5' over 'security risk fears': Report

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s mobile phone was confiscated by “officials” reportedly over Britain’s security service or MI5 security concerns. It has previously emerged in April that Johnson’s personal phone number had been available on the internet for the last decade and a half. The document showing the UK PM’s contact number listed on the bottom of a press release when he was still a shadow higher education minister in 2006, is still available online in 2021, at least 15 years later. However, the number stopped working shortly after the publication.

According to a Daily Mail report published on Sunday, ‘spooks’ had been taken away from the British PM over the fears of a potential hack from several hostile states. Reportedly, Downing Street had accepted that the phone had been confiscated, but said that it had been seized by “officials.”

Johnson’s use of his mobile phone came under the radar recently after Former Downing Street Chief of Staff Dominic Cummings published his chat with UK PM on WhatsApp with Johnson describing UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock as “totally f****ing hopeless.”

The British media outlet reported that over fears of ‘massive security risk’ it was the spooks or MI5 officials who gave the go-ahead for Johnson’s phone to be taken from him within 24 hours of Numbergate being exposed. The concerns of MI5 rooted from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman being a suspect of accessing Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’s phone through spyware planted via WhatsApp messages. The source told the media outlet, “Someone took the phone away at the behest of the spooks. They said it was a security risk.” The title ‘spooks’ is a popular colloquialism for spies.

Dominic Cummings leaks WhatsApp exchange

The Daily Mail report follows a leak by Cummings who posted a portion of his chat with the UK PM that suggested that Johnson thinks Hancock is “hopeless” at the peak of the first COVID-19 wave in the country. The former Number 10 adviser leaked the exchange on WhatsApp as he continues to fight back against the Conservative government and attempts to undermine his account of disarray in Downing Street as well as the UK’s Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Cummings has accused both UK PM and Health Secretary of trying to "rewrite history” to cover up their initial “herd immunity” strategy and their shortcomings on the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) among other facilities as the COVID-19 pandemic began rocking the country.

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