National's Budget leak documents 2019

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#2248149 30-May-2019 08:11

tdgeek:

Treasury didnt break the embargo. An unknown exploit broke it, you make it sound like they went ahead and broke it. An unknown issue broke it, Treasury are responsible.

Peters is now wrong to label it as illegal. It is just illicit and breaks all conventions for embargoed information in Parliament, let alone trust and acceptable behaviour. I don't see anything wrong with the rest that Peters stated, unless obtaining unauthorised data is now seen as a great idea.

You seem to feel that now it isn't labelled as illegal, or hacking, that its all fair game, or as Mr B says, a good job, and shrewd?

My position is, we now know the cause. There was a hole in Treasury's practices. Nothing else changes. I would hate to read the posts should the reverse had been the case.

Treasury came out and said they were subjected to a deliberate and sustained 'hack'.

The 'hack' was someone using the search function on their website to search for things. My understanding is the issue was they'd not flagged the dummy site in their own system to not be crawled so they wouldn't return results in the searches. That's not an exploit. That's a ****-up.

They then issued a press released at 5am this morning saying "Oops, now there's no hack"

Apart from the basic competence, there's real questions around the politicisation of a Government department. They instantly referred what anyone would know to be a major infosec faux pas to the Police almost immediately.

Also, for information to be embargoed, it has to be delivered with a clear embargo - like the budget lock-up room.

It was shrewd. Everyone jumped the gun to assume National was doing Dirty Politics stuff when it was just good old fashioned incompetence. Winston went all in on it immediately, Robertson less so but still draw a strong link between some sort of illegal hacking and National.

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#2248156 30-May-2019 08:21

Ok, so you have no interest in the dirty politics of acquiring and using unauthorised information? Your only issue is that Treasury labelled it as a hack, and it was later found not to be a hack?

Clearly they checked and saw multiple attempts and took that as hacking into the data. The only way I can see to satisfy your position is that they told us that 'we see something, but we wont say anything more until we know what it is, that may be in an hour or two weeks"

While you can label that as incompetence by Treasury, you are perfectly ok with anyone illicitly gathering unauthorised data?

GV27

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#2248157 30-May-2019 08:21

E: From Stuff:

Stuff understood National Party policy advisers stumbled across the documents by using Treasury's search feature to look for past Budget documents.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/113109311/no-further-police-action-on-budget-leaks

There wasn't even malicious intent, yet you had the Finance Minister, Winston and the Head of a Government Department all suggesting that it was a sophisticated hacking operation.

You may feel like "nothing has changed", TD, but it's starting to look like they went to the police to shut down an opposition that caught the Government out on something.

That's terrifying.

GV27

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#2248158 30-May-2019 08:23

tdgeek:

Clearly they checked and saw multiple attempts and took that as hacking into the data. The only way I can see to satisfy your position is that they told us that 'we see something, but we wont say anything more until we know what it is, that may be in an hour or two weeks"

What are they counting as hacking? Are they counting "Searching for old budget data and being shown new budget data" as a sophisticated hack?

No one is cutting Bridges anywhere near this much slack, the mental gymnastics to keep making this National's fault depsite increasing evidence of official ineptitude and politicisation of Treasury mounting by the hour.

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#2248164 30-May-2019 08:31

Why did Simon refuse to divulge his sources, IF the source was his people just searching for 2018 Budget data? he could have said we were looking for 2018 data and look what we found. he can them blame someone, leak to the public to gain brownie points and he is clean. But no, it was all secret squirrel. Until others found out the real issue, its not surprising the already untrustworthy SB was targeted. JK would have laughed this off and remained clean. SB just milked it poorly, and is poor reputation made his a target. Too bad.

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#2248165 30-May-2019 08:36

tdgeek:

Why did Simon refuse to divulge his sources, IF the source was his people just searching for 2018 Budget data? he could have said we were looking for 2018 data and look what we found. he can them blame someone, leak to the public to gain brownie points and he is clean. But no, it was all secret squirrel. Until others found out the real issue, its not surprising the already untrustworthy SB was targeted. JK would have laughed this off and remained clean. SB just milked it poorly, and is poor reputation made his a target. Too bad.

He didn't refuse to. He said he would tell everyone what happened at 1130 this morning.

Then at 5am, Treasury puts out a statement saying "No wait, sorry, we got something wrong here".

I mean..... come on.

GV27

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#2248168 30-May-2019 08:37

From the Stuff liveblog:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/113076613/live-leaks-ahead-of-government-releasing-its-wellbeing-budget

And happy budget day! This morning's revelations around how large swathes of the budget came to be made public, really is extraordinary.

But I think the most pressing question Treasury needs to answer now, is how it did not know the budget was publicly searchable at the time Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf referred the matter to police.

Don't forget, he shopped around this metaphor that the budget was a "bolted document in a locked room", to media, and this it was attacked more than 2000 times.
It simply wasn't.

So if Makhlouf knew that when he went to police, and when he drew in the Finance Minister to plead with National not to release any more budget information, was he at that point... using police to gag the Opposition?

It's a serious question and at this point it seems to be a very chilling response to the crisis from Treasury.

But sure, let's keep talking about the ethics of Bridges' actions, that's definitely the most important issue at play here.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

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#2248171 30-May-2019 08:40

GV27:

tdgeek:

Why did Simon refuse to divulge his sources, IF the source was his people just searching for 2018 Budget data? he could have said we were looking for 2018 data and look what we found. he can them blame someone, leak to the public to gain brownie points and he is clean. But no, it was all secret squirrel. Until others found out the real issue, its not surprising the already untrustworthy SB was targeted. JK would have laughed this off and remained clean. SB just milked it poorly, and is poor reputation made his a target. Too bad.

He didn't refuse to. He said he would tell everyone what happened at 1130 this morning.

Then at 5am, Treasury puts out a statement saying "No wait, sorry, we got something wrong here".

I mean..... come on.

When this broke, he refused to. I read it, I watched it.

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#2248176 30-May-2019 08:45

GV27:

From the Stuff liveblog:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/113076613/live-leaks-ahead-of-government-releasing-its-wellbeing-budget

And happy budget day! This morning's revelations around how large swathes of the budget came to be made public, really is extraordinary.

But I think the most pressing question Treasury needs to answer now, is how it did not know the budget was publicly searchable at the time Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf referred the matter to police.

Don't forget, he shopped around this metaphor that the budget was a "bolted document in a locked room", to media, and this it was attacked more than 2000 times.
It simply wasn't.

So if Makhlouf knew that when he went to police, and when he drew in the Finance Minister to plead with National not to release any more budget information, was he at that point... using police to gag the Opposition?

It's a serious question and at this point it seems to be a very chilling response to the crisis from Treasury.

But sure, let's keep talking about the ethics of Bridges' actions, that's definitely the most important issue at play here.

Not at all. Did Makhouf know that it was not a hack and he knew what the real issue was when he went to the Police? That is quite a bizarre supposition to make out of the blue. If that is the case, he knows he would be found out and terminated. It seems to be like bluster to keep this story alight TBH

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#2248178 30-May-2019 08:47

tdgeek:

Why did Simon refuse to divulge his sources, IF the source was his people just searching for 2018 Budget data? he could have said we were looking for 2018 data and look what we found. he can them blame someone, leak to the public to gain brownie points and he is clean. But no, it was all secret squirrel. Until others found out the real issue, its not surprising the already untrustworthy SB was targeted. JK would have laughed this off and remained clean. SB just milked it poorly, and is poor reputation made his a target. Too bad.

All Simon Bridges needed to do was to VERY publicly hand the material over to Jacinda or Grant saying no one in National read any of it because National stands for Honesty, integrity and strong g moral values. Better yet he should have handed it over the Trevor Mallard. Simon Bridges would have scored points and come out smelling of roses. But that's not what he did.

Bridges knows the budget is meant to be embargoed, he has no excuse. He could have done the right thing.

All I can believe of Bridges now is that he was still smarting over his travel costs being leaked and went the revenge route. Unlike the budget which can be exploited by people for financial gain (buy/sell shares/property etc) his travel expenses were a nothing burger that if he ignored would have faded into the distance all by its self.

Bridges , to me , has clearly shown he is not a person who should be trusted with leadership. He looks too much like a dodgy used car salesman, not a respected statesman.

GV27

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#2248185 30-May-2019 08:50

tdgeek:

Not at all. Did Makhouf know that it was not a hack and he knew what the real issue was when he went to the Police? That is quite a bizarre supposition to make out of the blue. If that is the case, he knows he would be found out and terminated. It seems to be like bluster to keep this story alight TBH

He could clear this up by making a statement. Instead he's saying things like this:

"In my view, there were deliberate, exhaustive and sustained attempts to gain unauthorised access to embargoed data. Our systems were clearly susceptible to such unacceptable behaviour, in breach of the long-standing convention around Budget confidentiality, and we will undertake a review to make them more robust."

So... it's basically confirming exactly what they said? This was the basis for the complaint.

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#2248187 30-May-2019 08:54

Right, Simon says that Treasury knew all along what the issue was and sat on a lie. How does he know this to be factual? he has talked to sources in Treasury. Has he named those sources or are they secret so cannot be verified? if he is correct, the Treasury leader needs to resign.

So, now we know more, we can be happy that using unauthorised data is cool and a wonderful thi ng to do, trust and conventions are overrated it seems. Nice deflection Simon. Treasury appears now to be 100% wrong, but your behaviour doesn't change

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#2248189 30-May-2019 08:55

sir1963:

Bridges knows the budget is meant to be embargoed

Bridges wasn't given embargoed budget data with an embargo. Yet he's meant to abide by a fictitious embargo on data that Treasury made publicly searchable?

And what of the actions of the Finance Minister, Winston, Treasury, etc?

Or is Bridges the only one who faces any sort of accountability because you don't like his colours?

tdgeek

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#2248191 30-May-2019 08:58

GV27:

tdgeek:

Not at all. Did Makhouf know that it was not a hack and he knew what the real issue was when he went to the Police? That is quite a bizarre supposition to make out of the blue. If that is the case, he knows he would be found out and terminated. It seems to be like bluster to keep this story alight TBH

He could clear this up by making a statement. Instead he's saying things like this:

"In my view, there were deliberate, exhaustive and sustained attempts to gain unauthorised access to embargoed data. Our systems were clearly susceptible to such unacceptable behaviour, in breach of the long-standing convention around Budget confidentiality, and we will undertake a review to make them more robust."

So... it's basically confirming exactly what they said? This was the basis for the complaint.

If that's what he has said, then yes I agree.

GV27

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#2248193 30-May-2019 08:58

tdgeek:

So, now we know more, we can be happy that using unauthorised data is cool and a wonderful thi ng to do, trust and conventions are overrated it seems. Nice deflection Simon. Treasury appears now to be 100% wrong, but your behaviour doesn't change

Treasury isn't just wrong, it may have acted in a politicised way.

Like I've said, the Dirty Politics email saga set the bar low for this stuff, and the then opposition was happy to ride it for all it's worth. Suddenly holding Bridges to a higher standard than anyone else has previously been held to is pure partisanship.

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