So yesterday we had peak media angst day and the media spent all day talking about how Simon Bridges said Grant Robertson said one thing and Grant Robertson said he said no such thing.
Why couldn’t they just actually analyse the evidence and make a call on it. Instead of going through the he said he said charade. After all what was said was pretty clear.
Tuesday night Gabriel Makhlouf said this:
Following this morning’s media reports of a potential leak of Budget information, the Treasury has gathered sufficient evidence to indicate that its systems have been deliberately and systematically hacked.
The Treasury has referred the matter to the Police on the advice of the National Cyber Security Centre.
The Treasury takes the security of all the information it holds extremely seriously. It has taken immediate steps today to increase the security of all Budget-related information and will be undertaking a full review of information security processes. There is no evidence that any personal information held by the Treasury has been subject to this hacking.
In response Grant said this:
This is extremely serious and is now a matter for the Police.
We have contacted the National Party tonight to request that they do not release any further material, given that the Treasury said they have sufficient evidence that indicates the material is a result of a systematic hack and is now subject to a Police investigation.
What New Zealanders care about are the issues that will be dealt with in the Wellbeing Budget on Thursday, and that is what we continue to be focussed on.”
So yeah Grant accused National of being in possession of hacked material. This seems clear.
But yesterday morning Simon went all troppo on it and accused Labour of accusing National of being the hacker.
From Radio New Zealand:
Simon Bridges says the National Party has not been involved in any computer hacking and the government is “lashing out in a witch hunt”.
…
He said Finance Minister Grant Robertson was lying and smearing the National Party.
“Grant Robertson has made scurrilous, false allegations.”
Asked if he would resign if National was found to have hacked Treasury systems, Mr Bridges said: “That is not going to happen. You have my categorical assurance about that.”
Mr Bridges said it was “not his intention” to release any more information from the Budget today.
Well feck me. Can someone point to where Robertson said that National had been involved in computer hacking? Or sheep shagging for that matter. Either claim has an equivalent amount of legitimacy.
This matters. The media do us all a real disservice by engaging in this “he said, he said” stuff. The world’s environment is being crushed because a tiny number of climate change deniers’ views is being presented as just as valid as those of a significant scientific consensus.
This morning Simon has promised to reveal how his party came into possession of the information. It looks like he may not have to. The police have confirmed that a criminal hacking has not occurred.
From Radio New Zealand:
Treasury has confirmed that a feature in its website search tool was exploited by an unknown person or persons, but police have concluded this did not break the law.
The investigation found one of the IP addresses involved in the searches belonged to the Parliamentary Service.
In a statement released this morning, Treasury said a police investigation had concluded and they were not planning any further action.
But Treasury said the evidence showed “deliberate, systematic and persistent searching of a website that was clearly not intended to be public”.
“Evidence was found of searches that were clearly intended to produce results that would disclose embargoed Budget information. Three IP addresses were identified that performed (in the Treasury’s estimation) approximately 2000 searches, over a period of 48 hours, which pieced together the small amount of content available via the search tool.
“The IP addresses involved belonged to the Parliamentary Service, 2degrees and Vocus.”
The screen shots presented by Idiot Savant are the secret and confirm that parts of documents lodged in preparation of a go live application were visible through using the search function on the Treasury Website.
Makhlouf’s description of what happened needs to be reviewed. He gave the clear impression that what had happened was continuous attempted log ins by someone without legitimate credentials. He did not mention that the Treasury’s website’s search function was being used. This was a major omission and gave an incorrect impression of what had happened.
Of course National’s behaviour is all grandstanding. I would prefer to be hearing about what improvements to education, health and the environment the Government was planning to do. Watching a couple of male politicians engage in a pissing competition seems to be a total waste of time.
But Simon is in the clear on this one.
Out in voter land do people care? Most of us would prefer to hear about how the Government is addressing some pretty major problems, like child poverty, the health underspend, mental health or teachers’ salaries.
But I am sure that Simon will prefer that we concentrate on what was or was not said about him.
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