Duggar official website

NEWTON, Mass. — Officials in a Boston suburb are investigating a former city employee they say shut down the police website during a pay dispute.

Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said the former employee, who was the police department information technology director, took down the department website in late June and July. The website instead directed visitors to a message that called on them to contact Fuller and ask the mayor to restore it , The Boston Globe reported on Friday.

Fuller said the employee controls access to the site and has not turned it over to the city. Newton has created a new police department website in its place. The old website was no longer active on Sunday.

Fuller told the Globe in a statement earlier this week that the employee shut down “a vital resource for the residents of the city of Newton.” The employee notified city officials in March that he was leaving the job, the Globe reported. The paper reported the employee felt he was owed $137,000 in compensatory time at the time he shut down the website, the paper reported.

The employee said in a statement that he was “disheartened by the city’s representation of the facts in this matter” and he would work with the city to resolve the problem.

As an adviser to the Labour Party on immigration law and policy, I write draft parliamentary questions for MPs and peers to consider. They cover issues like government statistics, border control or their assessment of topical problems. Usually, they receive short, bland replies; but on some rare occasions they reveal something significant – even extraordinary.

For example, in January 2021, Holly Lynch MP asked about the most times someone has failed the “Life in the UK” citizenship test. The reply from immigration minister Kevin Foster MP was very surprising .

Foster confirmed someone had failed the test 118 times in a row . But what was even more intriguing was that he claimed this happened over two years in 2015 and 2016. This looked to me like a mistake, but it wasn’t – and it reveals something genuinely troubling.

The citizenship test cannot be sat more than once every seven days. We might call this “the seven-day rule”, for short. This guidance has remained the same since the test was launched in November 2005.

The seven-day rule has been repeatedly confirmed by the immigration minister of the day in both Conservative and Labour governments, as early as January 2009 – and most recently as June last year.

So, the problem with this parliamentary question (PQ) about the number of times any one person has failed the test is that it should not have been possible to fail 118 times in a row. Under the seven-day rule, no one can sit the test more than 52 times a year. If someone failed it every seven days for two years, this should be no more than 104 attempts – and not the 118 times reported by the minister under a Conservative government that should be abiding by its own rules and guidance.

This problem matters for two reasons.

First, the test is expensive. Each attempt costs £50. Someone failing the test 118 times would have to pay £5,900 for the tests. While the Home Office outsources the handling of the tests, it cannot outsource its responsibility for ensuring that its published official guidance is followed.

Secondly, passing the Life in the UK test is a requirement for permanent residency or citizenship. So, maintaining strict standards is enormously important. The public expects the Home Office to get this important duty right.

And the truth is: it hasn’t been getting it right.

In a new reply to another parliamentary question tabled by Lord Rosser that follows this matter up, Baroness Williams of Trafford – speaking on behalf of the government – admitted that the public guidance about the seven-day rule was breached in this case.

But she claimed that the system used by the outsourced provider does not limit “ how frequently a test can be taken ”. It would therefore appear someone could sit a test more than once a day until they get it right – if they can afford to – and proceed to apply for settlement or citizenship more quickly than official Home Office guidance allows.

But that wasn’t all. While acknowledging the official website mandates that someone “must” wait seven days before taking another test, Baroness Williams said this was not actually a requirement – and so the government would simply change the wording of the rule on the official public website to make any apparent failure of enforcing their own rules go away. It now says that applicants “should” wait , but they need not any longer.

It is my opinion that this is much bigger than whether a simple rule is kept or changed. The failure to ensure Home Office guidance was followed harks back to 2015 and 2016 – its limitations and/or breaches only picked up by a fortuitous query from an opposition minister. If the question had not been asked, we would simply not know about it.

We do not know how many more citizenship applications were allowed to breach the seven-day rule over the last 12 years of Conservative governments – I hope questions about this are tabled shortly. But we do know it has happened. Changing the website does not erase the failure to ensure their guidance was followed, before – or now.

As for changing the wording of the website, well: it now says to follow the guidance – not the other way around. The seven-day rule is still the official guidance. Who is telling the truth? They can’t all be correct.

The government is, in my view, failing in its duties on doing full checks on citizenship tests. None have happened since February 2020. And, while so much else has reopened, unannounced visits at test centres have been kept on hold when they should have resumed some time ago. The test handbook itself is out of date – it was printed in 2013, before Brexit, and still mentions that the UK is part of the EU.

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Despite three different bodies in the House of Lords – a select committee on citizenship and civic participation , the liaison committee and the justice and home affairs committee – all calling on the government to consult and create a new, fourth edition of the test handbook, as I too have argued for at length, the government refuses to act.

What this all adds up to in my eyes is a clear disregard for enforcing the Home Office’s own guidance – and ignoring growing pleas to make the “Life in the UK” test fit for purpose. Does our government even take citizenship seriously? Isn’t this a very worrying place to be?

These failings should be urgently addressed before public confidence slips even further. Citizenship matters. It is time the government took its responsibilities more seriously.

Thom Brooks is a professor of law and government at Durham University’s Law School

Brits are among the most targeted European travellers when it comes to holidays scams which could see them thousands of pounds out of pocket.

With the holiday season upon us, travellers around the world are looking for interesting places to go, cheap places to stay and reasonably priced flights.

Scammers are here to pretend to give them exactly what they’re after.

According to researchers at cyber-security firm Kaspersky , the UK has ranked 3rd highest across Europe on both booking and airline scams.

Have you been targeted by scammers? Email [email protected]

In March alone, Kaspersky researchers found a total of 1,504 phishing pages distributed under the guise of booking and rental services in the UK.

Some of the most common holiday-themed techniques used by scammers during 2022 were:

Fake ticket aggregators

Most trips start with a plane or train ticket, and travel enthusiasts are often interested in getting their hands on a bargain.

Fake websites claim to offer users the chance to buy airplane tickets at cheaper costs, but are in fact well-made fake phishing pages designed to mimic famous airline services and air ticket aggregators.

Some of these websites even display the details of real flights, with experienced phishers sending search requests to flight aggregators and displaying the information received from them.

Instead of delivering on promised flight tickets they keep your money and could use your personal information for malicious purposes.

Fake lotteries for discounted tickets

Another way scammers lure people in is via fake pages which offer airplane ticket draws, lotteries and gift cards.

Users are offered the opportunity to take a small survey and enter their personal details in exchange for a generous discount on a flight ticket.

As with many other offers that seems to be too good to be true, such websites end up being phishing sites, collecting victims’ personal information and card details.

On top of this, the survey usually ends with a request to distribute the site among friends to receive the prize.

In such cases, cybercriminals are using the victims themselves as a tool for spreading the scam further, as a link sent by people you know seems more trustworthy than one received from a stranger.

If the user then follows the link and tries to get their prize, they often find they need to pay a commission or fee first.

After this money is paid, the cybercriminals disappear – without rewarding the user.

Fake rentals

Another popular tactic used to scam travellers is fake rental services.

One example found by Kaspersky researchers included the offer of a luxury two-bedroom apartment close to the centre of a European capital for just €500 a month.

Another seemingly appealing offer was for the rental of an entire four-bedroom house with a pool and fireplace for only €1,000 for the whole month.

The reviews describe an amazing vacation and hospitable hosts – details designed to tempt users to pay for their month-long stay, but in reality they end up sending their money to fraudsters.

How to keep yourself safe

1. Carefully looking at the address bar before entering any sensitive information, such as your login details and password. If something is wrong with the URL (i.e. spelling, it doesn’t look like the original or it uses some special symbols instead of letters) don’t enter anything on the site. If in doubt, check the certificate of the site by clicking on the lock icon to the left of the URL.
2. Only booking your stay and tickets through the trusted websites of trusted providers. Ideally, type the address of their website manually in the address bar.
3. Not clicking on links that come from unknown sources (either through e-mails, messaging apps or social networks).
4. Visiting the business’ official website if you see a giveaway offered in e-mail or on social media by a travel company or an airline to confirm the giveaway exists. You should also carefully check the links the giveaway ad leads you to.
5. Using a good security solution that can protect you from spam emails and phishing attacks. We recommend Kaspersky Security Cloud.

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