Saturday 22 December 2012

Sortius seeks answers

 
Sortius is a Geek sent this email below to the Department of Parliamentary Services on 18 December 2012. The next day Sortius alleged his website was being blocked so that staff at Parliament House could not read his opinions concerning Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.
 
 
Hi,
 
My name is Kieran Cummings & I write for Independent Australia (& my own blog) about technology & politics.
I recently wrote an article in regard to the press release offered by Tony Abbott’s office regarding James Ashby’s case against Peter Slipper. During my investigation I have uncovered quite a lot of information about the PDFs & when they were produced.
Yesterday I was contacted by journalists to advise that DPS had made a statement in regard to when the PDFs were produced. I feel this statement raises more questions than it answers & I would like to get some more information from DPS on this.
What are “technical staff” using to determine when the files were created/converted to PDF? Are you monitoring every computer on the network & all file creations/accesses?
How is it possible for APH’s computers/servers to run on a time zone outside AEST/AEDT? To my knowledge this will cause all sorts of problems with appointments, logs, etc.
The original press release does not use a “z date” format for time stamping, so I ask which file is DPS referring to? The one modified on 23/04/12 or the original that does not include the “z date” formatting? (I have included the original file that was emailed out before the press release that has passed on from a journalist to myself)
No other files around the time this was created exhibit the same symptoms, if APH does indeed use UTC on all the computers this would be easily replicated. Why is this not the case?
When DPS notes that this was a “technical problem”, where is it arising from?
Tony Abbott’s office advised on 13/12/12 that they were aware of the problem in April 2012, yet DPS does not seem to have known about the problem until 13/12/12. Can DPS please confirm that this has been a continual problem?
Your prompt responses would be appreciated.
 
Regards,
Kieran Cummings
 
yeh, they are actually investigating it. Apparently my blog has been blocked at APH.
 

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