The mother of a teenager affected by a major Government digital privacy breach says she’s alarmed at the ease with which her son’s information was shared online.
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage revealed on Sunday more than 300 people had had their personal documents compromised following a “coding error” on a ministry-commissioned website.
The 370-plus documents belonged to people who had applied to be part of the Tuia 250 sailings around the New Zealand coast – part of commemorations marking the 250th anniversary of the first onshore meetings between Māori and Europeans.
Leaked documents included 228 passports, 55 driver licences and 36 birth certificates, as well as other information such as secondary school IDs and residential visas.
When you think about it, the privacy breach at the Ministry of Culture and Heritage for the 250th year of James Cook sailing around NZ is actually all part of the colonial experience.
You get robbed of your identity at huge cost to you and the Crown just has to say sorry and you get a pittance in reparations!
Now you know how Māori feel!
Thank you, thank you, (I also do children parties and bar mitzvahs).
While we are at it, isn’t it odd that James Cook is not actually mentioned once on the Tuia 250 event website?
It’s 250 years since Cook arrived in NZ on October 6th 1769, yet his name isn’t even mentioned because he’s been deplatformed as part of the woke cancel culture which just seems bizarre doesn’t it?
We are celebrating a 250 year event, but not actually mentioning the man who created that event. I’ve always thought that the private business interests that secretly funded Cook to embark upon his sea going side hustle was interesting as it showed the very first white exploration of NZ was always for profit and that we could reflect upon that first contact contamination, but because we live in trigger free safe spaces we can’t mention his name and so that whole criticism of neoliberal free market capitalism can’t occur.
If we deplatform and cancel the woke-washed past we learn fucking nothing from it.
Never mind Martyn. The Chief (Exectioner Ossifer) has it all in hand and processes are being followed. Once an inquiry has been completed, we’ll hear the results in the fullness of time going forward, and processes will be amended where appropriate. Rest assured when her performance appraisal is done, this little failure will be matched against her otherwise stellar career in a fair and balanced way
I would have thought third party contractors working on government websites would have to store sensitive data on government servers accessed securely via a set of well tested and secure API. Furthermore a standard set of tests would be undertaken to ensure the data remained secure regardless of the quality of the contractors solution. This removes the need to reinvent the wheel each time a new contract is let. Failing that sites should be developed to appropriate security standards. For example biomteric data only stored in hashed (encrypted) form. In this day and age there is no excuse.
As Maori hate Cook and pakeha aren’t allowed to mention him, I really wonder what the point of the ‘commemoration’ is at all
Someone should get the sack for this error how much is it going to cost to replace all those passports and licenses. We need to see the costs to tax payers for this error they said they were gong to be transparent well tell us how much this privacy breach costs us and who is to blame
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