The Census, or should I say the spectacular #censusfail has caused a very rare event indeed… the Greens and I agree with each other!

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, the Census website crashed under the strain of… wait for it… the Census. It was apparently targeted in an attack that was:

“not an attack. Nor was it a hack but rather, it was an attempt to frustrate the collection of bureau of statistics census data

… if you believe Minister for Small Business Michael McCormack’s spin. Well that clears that up…

Here in the real world we can clearly see that it was a DDOS attack of the very run-of-the-mill variety which any decent website of this magnitude should be built to withstand.

It’s also worth noting that the ABS only stress tested the site to withstand 1 Million Census submissions per hour… but with 6 Million households plus a large number of businesses (such as hotels and hospitals) also needing to submit forms, and all being expected to do it on the same evening… clearly the maths wasn’t very well thought through. It’s quite literally true that people using the website in the manner they were told to would have been enough to overwhelm it even without additional attacks.

Of course, all this is on the back of the bigger issue of privacy concerns about the ABS plans to keep personal identifying data for four years, and to link the census dataset to other government data, which would create an ongoing surveillance setup unprecedented in this country. Thankfully a lot of people are joining the dots, and asking if the ABS are this incompetent with websites and IT systems, and this unable to plan for predictable DDOS attacks, then are they really the right people to trust with our personal information?

For context, keep in mind that the chief statistician, the head honcho of the ABS, gets one of the most generous pay packages ON THE PLANET. More than the US President, who commands the worlds most powerful military. And he can’t oversee the rollout of a website…

So in the wake of all this spectacular over-reach followed by spectacular failure, Senator Scott Ludlam made this excellent promise today:

With the census website in meltdown, the Greens have called on the ABS to immediately confirm no fines will be levied on those unable to complete the survey.

In addition, the Greens will introduce amendments when parliament returns, to ensure that people acting to protect their privacy in response to the census will not be fined, and to prevent the ABS from entrenching individual ‘linkage keys’ that track every citizen for their lifetime. [emphasis added]

“The ABS and the government have ignored expert warnings for months, acted dismissively over the concerns people raised, and find themselves on the eve of the census facing widespread civil disobedience as people act to protect their own privacy,” Australian Greens Co-Deputy Leader and Communications Spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam said today.

“I also hope the Government will be seeking a refund from the company that undertook load-testing on the ABS servers, which appear to have collapsed under the weight of people attempting to complete the document online.

“Given that once again this government has failed to stand up for the privacy of Australians, it is clear they can not be trusted to protect people, so people have felt compelled to take action. No-one should be punished for that.

“When parliament resumes, unless the ABS has fundamentally changed its approach, we will introduce amendments to the Census Act to prohibit the creation of the linkage keys that are set to transform the census from a once every five years snapshot of Australia into lifetime surveillance.

“It was only by conducting an unaccountable internal process and a sneaky pre-Christmas announcement that the ABS was able to persuade itself that this was a good idea. Now the integrity of the census itself is on the line.

“Australians deserve better from their government and their government departments. We’re aiming to get these amendments debated so that future governments can not fail Australians in this way ever again,” Senator Ludlam concluded.

There you have it. Mark this day in your calendars everyone… it’s the day the Greens took a stand on the right side of an issue. Amazing. Now to watch with interest to see if they’ll make good on their promise…

Sadly, even if they do follow through, it’s unlikely that either Labor or Libs will support the amendments, so it’s all probably a moot point anyway, but then again we may see some politicians willing to ‘cross the floor’ on this one, so you never know.

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