“A text message barely takes any room on a modern phone. Like, you would need to get hundreds of thousands of text messages for it to actually make a difference,” Belgian ethical hacker Inti De Ceukelaire said, calling the Commission’s explanation “a non-argument.”
“Why doesn’t she change to a phone with more storage?” asked Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at technology market research firm IDC in Europe.
Ursula von der Leyen is in the hot seat over a text message she received from French President Emmanuel Macron last year urging her to block the EU-Mercosur trade deal, as first reported by POLITICO. The message was subsequently deleted from von der Leyen’s phone, the Commission said in response to an access to documents request filed by Follow the Money reporter Alexander Fanta.
On Wednesday Commission spokesperson Olof Gill told reporters: “The messages are auto-deleted after a while, just for space reasons.” He jokingly added: “Otherwise, the phone would go on fire.”
Another spokesperson, Balazs Ujvari, added it also helped prevent security breaches, but doubled down on the idea that it was a means of saving space: “On the one hand, it reduces the risk of leaks and security breaches, which is of course an important factor … And also, it’s a question of space on the phone, so, effective use of a mobile device.”
To be sure, many Europeans have struggled with overloaded phone storage. But for most it’s a matter of home videos and reams of family pictures that are clogging devices.