Tinfoil Hats And The Census!

Rossleigh

8 years ago

A few days ago Christopher Pyne told us: “I think Senator Xenophon is engaging in somewhat of a tinfoil hat kind of politics when he says that he’s raising doubts about the census.” Then it was the turn of the best minister in the world, Greg Hunt to suggest that various senators had read too many conspiracy theories if they thought that there was any danger of their data being hacked.

Now, while I wasn’t quite as concerned as Xenophon, Ludlam et al about my data being hacked, I did think that it was strange politics to attack them like that. After all, there’d be some swinging voters who’d also have similar concerns. I don’t think that you really win them over by mocking those who are publicly expressing views similar to theirs. It’s not like ridiculing Barnaby Joyce has suddenly caused a rethink among those who believe that climate change is a conspiracy between socialists and the bankers to institute a world government where only gay indigenous whales will have the right to vote.

Of course, there were no concerns about security because as the ABS head, David Kalisch said: “I can assure the Australian population that the ABS has the best security features you could ever ask for.” He went on to use the fact that, even though other government websites had been hacked, the ABS had an “unblemished” record with census data…Which is sort of like me saying that I’m immortal because I haven’t died in the past. (Ok, according to the prevailing Judeo-Christian values. I’d point out that I may have died and been reincarnated many, many times and for my past sins, I’ve been born into a country where a significant number of people voted for Tony Abbott. Who was I? Hitler?)

And as for suggestions that the ABS website might crash well, why would anyone think that.

But crash it did.

Or rather, it didn’t crash. They simply decided to shut it down… Not because it was under attack as the PM suggested earlier today, but because of something called a DOS… Which is an acronym for Denial of Service, and it’s not a hack as such so there was no danger to our data. And not just because most people hadn’t managed to log onto the site. No, there was no danger to our data because the ABS shut down the site so that the data couldn’t be hacked. Which, of course, there was no danger of, because of, well, the ABS had an “unblemished record”, so rather than take a chance that our data might be compromised, they shut it down, because of the DOS. Which wasn’t an attack… Or an attempted hack.

In fact, according to the ABS, it was something to do with Telstra. I mean, there always dropping out, so it must have been them, right?

But rest assured, there’s going to be an investigation and Mr Turnbull is certainly going to get to the bottom… Maybe not of this, but he’ll be soon getting to a sort of rock bottom, if the rest of the Liberals have their way. Of course, we don’t need an INDEPENDENT investigation, because what could an independent investigation find that our investigator couldn’t? We don’t know and we certainly don’t want to find out.

There now, I don’t know why they didn’t just ask me to explain it. My little explanation is a lot easier to follow than the official one. Or ones, given that Turnbull thinks it was an attack, while to quote The Australian: “Michael McCormack, the minister in charge of the bungled census” declared there was no “attack” or “hack” of the ABS online survey but merely an “attempt to frustrate” the collection of data. I’m not sure if “minister in charge of the bungled census” is his official title, but it certainly stops anyone trying to draw any links to Turnbull by calling him “minister in charge of the bungled NBN”, which would be unfair, as this had nothing to do with that. That was a completely different bungle.

It was an non-attack by a person or persons attempting to frustrate, not to break in and we only shut it down in order to stop them in their attempt to frustrate. That sure fixed them.

Now, some of you may have seen this little article doing the rounds on social media.

They’re mischievously trying to suggest that there was no reporting of any DOS activity in Australia last night, but then it was all from overseas and not even blocking all non-Australian internet addresses stopped these overseas non-hackers.