As millions of people simultaneously attempted to log in to complete their census forms last night, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) servers failed under the enormous traffic load. The ABS has blamed this on a hardware router failure, a false positive in a monitoring system, and external attackers who were allegedly attempting to overload the servers through a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack occurring at the same time. David Kalisch, head of the ABS, claimed that the servers were taken offline between 7:30 pm AEST, after which time the main social media accounts continued to advise people that there was no problem and to complete the Census forms until 10 pm.

“The public was advised prior to the Census that it would not be a target for attack. The claims made after the event call into question the competence of those who planned the Census, as well as the Minister responsible,” commented Simon Frew, Pirate Party President. “The ABS has already breached the public’s trust by admitting to retaining personal information and enabling the linking of external datasets. They have now made that worse by incompetently allowing the online data collection to fail.”

“Online collection of data by any government department must be made opt-in so individuals can choose secure methods of having their data collected. The unavailability of the census online is a new chapter in the saga of the 2016 Census, and has done nothing to inspire confidence in a once-anticipated event that was intended to provide accurate information to government in order to better inform the development of our country. The extent of these failings demonstrate how out of touch government departments and ministers are when it comes to digital affairs and matters of privacy,” he added.

The real risk comes from plans to link the data under the statistical linkage key(SLK), where anyone with access to the servers can figure out what the SLK is for an individual, then cross-reference the data with other systems. The danger for privacy comes from this cross-referencing, as the data will be invaluable for hackers, overbearing governments and abusive former partners, among others.

“We call upon the ABS to abandon plans to make all of our private data searchable and cross-referenceable, so as to protect the privacy of every Australian. We also call on the ABS to send out paper forms and not penalise anyone who refuses to share identifiable information. The problems on Census night are just one aspect of a wide array of privacy and security concerns, and the cavalier attitude of the ABS toward privacy thus far means they cannot be trusted with the private data of all Australians,” Mr Frew continued.

“Further, the Pirate Party affirms its position that opt-out programs are inherently dangerous when it comes to dealing with personal data, and calls on the resignation of ABS head David Kalisch as a result of this debacle. On top of the previous disasters, data collected after Census night is now likely to be terminally compromised, as many people may see the claims of an attack and be less inclined now to provide accurate information. The ABS needs to immediately admit to its failings, address them transparently, and tell Australians what it plans to do to repair the trust in its processes.”