Former Murdoch journalist in charge of MyHealth records –what could possibly go wrong?

Former news editor of the notorious Newscorp publication The Sunday Times which was involved in the UK hacking scandal, former  Executive Director of Transparency and Open Data in the UK Cabinet Office and then National Director for Patients and Information and head of the toxic government Care.data project which stored patient medical information in a single database. before ending up as the commercial director of Telstra Health in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was appointed as CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency by the Turnbull Coalition Government to progress the stalled My Health Record national database in 2016 with a salary worth $522,240 a year.

 A curriculum vitae which may go some way to explaining why reports are beginning to emerge of individuals seeking to opt-out of My Health Record finding out they have been registered by stealth in the Australian national database some years ago.

Crikey.com.au, 18 July 2018:

The bureaucrat overseeing My Health Record presided over a disaster-plagued national health record system in the UK, and has written passionately about the belief people have no right to opt out of health records or anonymity.

Tim Kelsey is a former British journalist who moved into the electronic health record business in the 2000s. In 2012, he was appointed to run the UK government’s national health record system, Care.data, which was brought to a shuddering halt in 2014 after widespread criticism over the sale of patients’ private data to drug and insurance companies, then scrapped altogether in 2016. By that stage, Kelsey had moved to Telstra in Australia, before later taking a government role. There was considerable criticism about the lack of information around Care.data, and over 700,000 UK people opted out of the system.

Kelsey vehemently opposed allowing people to opt out — the exact model he is presiding over in Australia. In a 2009 article, “Long Live The Database State”, for Prospect…..

For Kelsey, this was necessary for effective health services…….

Kelsey also expressed his opposition to the anonymisation of data, even of the most personal kind…... 

Kelsey’s vision was of a vast state apparatus collecting, consolidating and distributing private information to enable an interventionist state.

Moreover, he stated others should have access to data…..

ADHA, Kelsey is doing little to fix his reputation for controversy. On Saturday, ADHA released an extraordinary 1000-word attack on News Corp health journalist Sue Dunlevy who correctly pointed out the strong risk to privacy in the My Health Record system. The statement repeatedly criticised Dunlevy, accusing her of “dangerous fearmongering” and being “misleading and ignorant”.

Dunlevy had rightly noted the lack of any effective information campaign about My Health record (exactly the criticism made of Care.data), prompting ADHA to boast of its $114 million campaign at Australia Post shops, Department of Human Services “access points” and letters to health practitioners. It makes you wonder why even News Corp’s Janet Albrechtsen said she’d never heard of My Health Record until last week…. 

Not everyone was impressed by NSW Roads and Maritime Services temporary asphalt batching plant "drop-in information session"

Meme contributed

The Pacific Highway upgrade between Woolgoolga and Ballina is being progressed by the Pacific Complete consortium composed of NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS), UK multinational Laing O'Rourke and Canadian multinational WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff.

On 11 July 2018 this consortium held a drop-in information session on the subject of the proposed temporary asphalt batching plant at Woombah, a small village in the Clarence River estuary.

This batching plant servicing the Pacific Highway upgrade for the next two and a half years will see up tp 600 heavy and light vehicle movements each day at the Pacific Highway turnoff to Woombah and Iluka - up to 500 heavy vehicle and 100 light vehicle.

Residents from Woombah and Iluka attended the information session.

It was a masterpiece of information sharing apparently.

 Here are selected quotes from one Woombah resident's notes taken at the time.

* "Drop in session by Pacific Complete = complete disaster."

* "The Pad being constructed out of existing 'stock pile and lay down' being prepared for the Asphalt plant did not require approval - Bronwyn Campbell, Communications Director"

* "It just made it the lead contender for the only three sites you investigated raising it above the 1 in 100 flood level?

"Don't know what you're getting at" -  Bronwyn Campbell, Communications Director" 

* "Safety Audit has been conducted for the Iluka turnoff" - Bronwyn Campbell, Communications Director 

By who?

"Don't know" - Bronwyn Campbell, Communications Director 

Can I get a copy?

"No - we do not give those out" - Bronwyn Campbell, Communications Director" 

* "The TRAFFIC INFO TABLE manned by Dave Allars and Ryan Leth were asked what traffic management were to be put in place for the construction of the Plant and the construction of the new Iluka Woombah intersection.

"Don't know" - Dave Allars"

Additional comment from a Woombah resident:

"Did you get to see Andrew Baker's response to briefing? Makes Gulaptis look smart."

“In his defense, he was lied to as well. Because they will force ALL TRAFFIC onto the new route - they told people was for southbound traffic only - the map clearly shows the old route (old Pac and Garrets will be closed) making the problem in fact - worse."

An email discussing the information session was also being sent out from Woombah:

“Pushing the residential/truck choke point from Iluka Road down to the new access road by 31 March 2019 is not a solution to the traffic safety problem. By closing off the Garrett's Lane Access to the Pacific Hwy, the exact same problem of congested traffic with the Plant will still exist into the foreseeable future. Given the Q1 2019 Map (attached) the dangers are increased with truck entry just meters from the New Pacific Hwy Entry. They will make the traffic problem even worse.”

One Iluka resident had this to say about the information session:

"I see in the handout that they decided to slip in a concrete batching plant on the same site as well. Does that mean there will be even more trucks?"

Another Iluka resident had this to say about that same  information session:

“Unbelievably slick PR operation engaging up to 30 or even 50 of the staff from within the complex, mostly office and management type staff I think. All squeaky clean and friendly with first names on their jackets.

A few of the highway people were across the issues but there was a lot of “I don’t know" or "I’ll get back to you” or “come over here and meet so and so who might know”.

They claim the batching plant is world’s best practice with systems in place to capture fugitive dusts and emissions.

I asked repeatedly about trucks carrying bitumen into the asphalt plant, or out of the plant as asphalt  were considered a Hazmat incident if there was an accident involving either the bitumen tankers or the asphalt trucks, but couldn’t really get an answer. No one seemed to know.

Plenty of spin last night.”

Note

Bitumin and asphalt are flammable and combustible solids which are Class 4 dangerous goods.

NSW Roads and Maritime Services, Work Health and Safety Procedures: Bitumin, 1 September 2017, excerpts:

Roads and Maritime Services managers must ensure that appropriate systems are in place to identify, assess and control workers’ exposure to bitumen. Additionally, managers must ensure that workers are provided with relevant information, training, instruction and supervision in the safe use, handling and emergency response requirements (for example bitumen burns cards) of bitumen products. Workers should be able to conduct their work without a risk to their health and safety. For their part, they need to take necessary precautions to prevent and effectively manage the potential hazards and risks of working with bitumen. Industry partners are required to meet work health and safety (WHS) legislative requirements and have in place appropriate safety management systems. Designers of Roads and Maritime infrastructure must eliminate or control (where elimination is not reasonably practicable) the possibility of injury or damage caused by work with bitumen during the construction, use, maintenance or demolition of infrastructure…

Work with bitumen refers to road construction and maintenance work involving:

* All aspects of ‘cold’ bitumen work (such as crack sealing or jointing and road maintenance using cold mix with emulsions applied at ambient temperature)

* ‘Hot’ bitumen products, which are those applied above ambient temperature. These include blending or heated bitumen binders, asphalt batch plant product, laying asphalt, stabilisation of granular materials with hot foamed bitumen, sprayed sealing with hot cutback or polymer modified bitumen or crack sealing with hot sealants

* Bitumen binders include cutback bitumen (with added solvents), bitumen emulsion (with chemically treated water), modified binders (including suitable storage with correct product signs and classification under Dangerous Goods) and oxidised bitumen…..

After identifying the hazards, risks and levels of risk for each risk, it is now necessary to identify and implement appropriate hazard controls. Where no single measure is sufficient, a number or combination of controls is usually required….

Ensuring emergency plans are developed for the specific worksite and emergency information panels are displayed on sides of vehicles carrying dangerous goods (HAZCHEM and UN Numbers), emergency contact numbers and Transport Management Centre (131700), where appropriate.

UPDATE

On Saturday 14 July 2018 the Woombah community held a meeting on the subject of the proposed temporary asphalt plant. This meeting was attended by Roads and Maritime Services Bob Higgins, some Pacific Complete staff and the Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis.

North Coast Voices has received a number of emails concerning this meeting and here are selected quotes:

* “Time after time – Pacific Complete were asked direct and specific questions that were uncomfortably left unanswered.”

* “Chris Gulaptis – when pressed several times “Would YOU like to like your family to live next door to an asphalt plant?” drew a pathetic “I do not know” to finally a capitulation.”

* “When asked about the toxic fumes Mr Gulaptis said ‘I don’t know until I know….but if its bad, if its toxic then of course it should be cut down, it should be closed down and it shouldn't be anywhere in fact, let alone on the corner of Iluka road but at the end of the day its got to go somewhere and we are going to look at the best site and the site that will least impact on our community’.”

* “Mr Bob Higgins, the representative from the RMS, who is in charge of delivering this project, was even more dismissive of community concerns regarding health, suggesting that things have improved over the years and “They have filters they have scrubbers so essentially it is steam which you see coming out.”  He further went on to question in relation to odour s from the plant “Is it harmful or is it inconvenient”  “Is it harmful?  I don’t believe this is the case.”  

I was appalled by that response. Steam does not have an odour! Bob Higgins has previously admitted on the ABC radio that Asphalt Plants do smell, they do have an odour. Breathing in  and smelling something means you are reacting to certain chemicals in the air. Those odours can be toxic and cause headache, nausea and other harmful health effects. 

Mr Higgins also stated that not only is the site to be used for stockpiling paving materials and then the asphalt batching plant but also a Foamed bitumen plant, which had not been disclosed to the community previously.  I find this also to be an additional concern."

* “It was brought to the attention of the meeting by a local residents that the Mororo Wetlands which lies on the western side of the highway is an area of significant environmental significant s with a number off endangered species of animals and pants as well as a koala presence.  From observation of the site it is clear that any run off from that site runs underneath the highway into Mororo Creek and Mororo Reserve. This was not addressed by anyone at the meeting."

* “Adam did talk about a new corridor being constructed under the highway for koalas to travel from one side of the highway to another however nothing about the current corridor which currently opens up onto the prepared site of the batch plant. He did not state the new corridor would be completed prior to proposed operation of the batch plant. Has anyone informed the Koalas?”

* “No answers were forthcoming from any speaker that addressed the dangers to the public, only that studies were currently underway. They had no plans in place to protect the safety of local road users.”

It appears that this meeting was at times quite testy with Gulaptis alternating between being quite defensive or argumentative, however it has resulted in a promise on the part of Roads and Maritime Services of a second extension to the formal submission period. With a date yet to be fixed.

Unfortunately what appears to have also been admitted is that because there are not one but two seperate plants that will be operating on the site, the number of construction vehicle movement is higher than previously disclosed.

For those interested, here is a link to the audio of this meeting:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cnwP7E_PK6jFBdw7ec0bxh5Ywsv_bUNi/view.

At 43:11mins a Woombah resident living close to the proposed site with her husband who has Stage 4 lung cancer spoke of lack of available information, questioned air quality and any effect this may have on her husband's quality of life. 

FURTHER UPDATE

Another concerned Woombah resident’s opinion of the 14 July community meeting:

“From the outset it was clear the community who had gathered in the park yesterday, wouldn't receive the answers they deserved to the questions they had asked.  Chris Gulpatis was keen to tell the crowd just how much money his government was spending.   I suspect we were meant to feel grateful for all the government is doing for us but isn't this their job? Chris explained he had had a briefing on the plant the other day and thought it all looked pretty good.  He qualified this with not being a resident of Woombah or Iluka, nor an engineer, he also wasn't familiar with the process.  Hey hold on Chris why didn't you make yourself familiar about this?  You knew you were coming to a meeting with your constituents who were concerned?....

The first resident to ask a question was about the traffic and the number of vehicles we could expect.  The documentation had these numbers as being different and residents were clearly confused.  They were told there would be around 300 vehicle movements on the days when the plant was working at peak but that there were other truck movements to expect and so the number was more like 500.  There was a quick sorry but that was the nature of the business. 

When asked about contingency plans for peak holiday periods like Christmas, was there a plan for managing this? We were told that up and down the highway there were severe guidelines in place with their contractors designed to manage their movements on the highway during holiday periods and that has been in place for many years.  So how come the pretty graph you have given us shows peak truck movements in January next year as the bitumen plant ramps up their production?  Aren't you contradicting yourself Bob?

Next we heard from a resident living in Banana Road with specialist interest in wildlife.  He asked about the large koala corridor that comes out at the access point of the proposed bitumen plant.  The response to this was rather amusing from Bob as he started he started to tell him about the koala corridor, the resident was quick to say I know about this too Bob.  He asked what happens here with this corridor where we have koalas using this corridor all the time and coming out at Mororo Creek Reserve.  He informed Bob the UNSW had been working in the area for the last four years and they had found endangered species including the golden headed python and sugar gliders.  His question was how do you address this?  Bob reminded us of his long experience and general experience of building roads on the highway and that he had come across this before.  He was asked where was this information for the public to consider when undertaking their consultation.  There was no reply to this question.

The next question was about the traffic flow asking about the high numbers of trucks in January - was this a mistake in the projections being put forward as it was a peak period for tourism in the area during this holiday period.  His answer to this questions was rather confusing and he just restated his earlier advice that there were strict guidelines in place for contractors……

The next resident summed it up eloquently, the community were concerned, they were worried the plant would affect their health.  Full stop.  Another resident who worked for WIRES said he was pretty pissed off as he had released a number of rescued animals into the area of the plant.  When asked about how odour would be contained on the site the team looked worried.  Bob took the question saying odour was an interesting one because it was all about smell.... yes Bob we know!  The question he suggested we needed to think about was - was it harmful to someone or was it an inconvenience to someone, he said he couldn't answer this one, the crowd suggested they could!

One of the residents closest to the plant had a couple of questions regarding due process.  She had bought there just two years ago and had done due diligence of all the searches possible.  She knew the road works were coming and was grateful for that.  The only thing that turned up in her searches was the compound across the road.  She asked why if you know there is bitumen required for the road why couldn't I find such information.  A year ago someone from the consortium had turned up at her property unannounced to say they were renting some land for raw materials as a depot or stockpile.  Moving on a year later they get a letter box drop saying feedback was being sought with a week to do this.  When attending the information session last Wednesday she asked where was the report about air quality?  She was told this wasn't available for two weeks.  She asked this because as one of her major concerns is about this as her husband is dying from Stage 4 Lung Cancer.  She couldn't understand how this information wasn't available within the timeframe of the consultation.  She appealed directly to Chris asking him "what can you do for my husband?  We bought here because of the zoning, because of how it protects wildlife, for the environment, we have no chance to sell our property.  A) because they don't have the energy, B) because they would lose money and my husband's dying days is going to be what no one here seems to be able to tell me what he will be breathing in, what he will smell and how its going to impact on his quality of life and his quality of death"….

Do the residents of Woombah feel they have been listened to?  I don't think so.  One woman expressed just that before the consultation was wound up. She was upset because she didn't feel like we had been listened to and most people in the audience felt the same way.

At the end there was a little concession – let’s extend the consultation.  That's all well and good but when are you going to hand over the information we need upon which to make our judgements?  When exactly? "

"Bad actor" Facebook Inc given £500,000 maximum fine - any future breach may cost up to £1.4bn

The Guardian, 11 July 20018:

Facebook is to be fined £500,000, the maximum amount possible, for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the information commissioner has announced.

The fine is for two breaches of the Data Protection Act. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concluded that Facebook failed to safeguard its users’ information and that it failed to be transparent about how that data was harvested by others.

 “Facebook has failed to provide the kind of protections they are required to under the Data Protection Act,” said Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner. “Fines and prosecutions punish the bad actors, but my real goal is to effect change and restore trust and confidence in our democratic system.”

In the first quarter of 2018, Facebook took £500,000 in revenue every five and a half minutes. Because of the timing of the breaches, the ICO said it was unable to levy the penalties introduced by the European General Data Protection (GDPR), which caps fines at the higher level of €20m (£17m) or 4% of global turnover – in Facebook’s case, $1.9bn (£1.4bn). The £500,000 cap was set by the Data Protection Act 1998.

As one of the IT whistleblowers described the situation...

Just to sum up. 1) Facebook broke the law. 2) Cambridge Analytica broke the law. 3) Vote Leave broke the law. 4) LeaveEU broke the law. 5) Brexit and Trump were both won through breaking the law. 6) Facebook let it all happen and covered it up. https://t.co/CAOrP5rKry

— Christopher Wylie 🏳️🌈 (@chrisinsilico) July 11, 2018

NSW Berejiklian Government 2018: How not to conduct a community consultation in the Clarence Valley, NSW

The Daily Examiner, Letter to the Editor, 10 July 2018, p.13:

So Road and Maritime Services intends to establish a temporary asphalt batching plant at Woombah with a heavy truck access road crossing Iluka Road approximately 230 metres from the Pacific Highway T-intersection.

One couldn’t choose a site more unsafe for private vehicles and more disruptive to tourist traffic. One that also is less than 500 metres from a waterway which empties into the Clarence River Estuary.

One couldn’t find a more inadequate approach to community consultation.

The Pillar Valley community were given an RMS community information session scheduled to last one and a half hours in May 2016 ahead of construction of a temporary batching plant there.

In September 2016 the Donnellyville community received a detailed 5-page information document at least a month ahead of construction and this included an aerial map showing infrastructure layout within the proposed temporary batching plant site. Up front the community was allotted two drop-in information sessions.

Most of the residents in Woombah and Iluka appear to have found out about the proposed temporary plant planned for Woombah in July 2018, the same month construction is due to start.

This plant will be in use for the next two and a half years but only a few residents were given some rudimentary information in a 3-page document and initially the community was not even offered a drop-in information session.

Perhaps the NSW Minister for Roads Maritime and Freight, Melinda Pavey, and Roads and Maritime Services might like to explain the haphazard, belated approach taken to informing the communities of Woombah and Iluka of the proposed plant.

The people of Woombah and Iluka deserve better. They deserve a formal information night which canvasses all the issues, with representatives from RMS and the Pacific Highway project team prepared to address concerns and answer questions, as well as a representative of the Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight in attendance as an observer.

They don’t deserve to be fobbed off with a quick patch-up, comprising a drop-in information session and one RMS representative deciding to attend a local community run meeting.

I’m sure that all residents and business owners in both Woombah and Iluka would appreciate a departmental re-think of this situation.

Judith Melville, Yamba

It is also beginning to look as though Roads and Maritime Services is only just getting around to meeting with Clarence Valley shire councillors as a group this week to brief them on the asphalt batching plant site.

Turnbull and Keenan botching digital transformation policy

The Australian Minister for Human Services, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Digital Transformation and Liberal MP for Stirling, 46 year-old Michael Fayat Keenan, is all gung-ho for digital transformation.

The problem is that he is just not good at being transformative – rather like his prime minister.

One could almost see the trainwreck coming down the line from the moment of then Communications Minister Turnbull's initial joint announcement with then Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2015.

Despite the obvious problems Michael Keenan will be commencing pre-rollout trials of a facial recognition program this year,

Yahoo News, 1 July 20118:

Welfare recipients will soon be asked to have their faces scanned before they can claim their benefits.

It is part of a new trial of biometric security measures the government will begin within months.

Similar to how SmartGates work at airports to check passports, government services will ask recipients to take a photo on a computer or phone to create a MyGov ID.

The photo will then be checked against passports and driver’s licences.

But there are questions as to whether this information could be misused.

Australian Privacy Foundation’s Bernard Robertson-Dunn said people needed to be assured “it works properly” and the government “doesn’t use the technology to do things it didn’t say it was going to do”.

Human Services Minister Michael Keenan said on May 1 the misuse of data which could be used to “impinge on people’s privacy” was “clearly” a concern for many Australians.

The 2016 Census is an example of a recent government technology fail….

Uses for the MyGov ID will trial from October – with an all-online way to get a tax file number.

Next year Centrelink services, including Newstart and Youth Allowance, will also be trialled.

Here is the organisational and technological mess that Keenan helped create…..

The Canberra Times, 29 June 2018, p.14:

The agency charged with guiding IT projects has been sidelined from major policies and is removed from the Coalition's thinking about digital reform, an inquiry into the government's $10 billion tech spend has found.

A report released on Wednesday has called for a central vision to guide the government in its IT reform and found changes to the Digital Transformation Agency had left it watching on as major tech projects hit disaster.

The inquiry found the DTA did not have the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission's botched project to adopt biometric technology on its watchlist and that it had failed to involve itself in determining why the Education Department's Australian Apprenticeship Management System project was called off.

It was sidelined as the Department of Home Affairs took charge of cyber policy, the Prime Minister's department assumed control of data policy and the newly created Office of the Information Commissioner was created separate from the DTA, the report said.

"The evidence heard by this committee revealed an organisation that was not at the centre of government thinking about digital transformation, or responsible for the creation and enactment of a broader vision of what that transformation would look like," it said.

News.com.au, 12 June 2018:

Australians will be able to access government services with a single log-in under a plan to create a "single digital identity" by 2025.

Michael Keenan, the federal minister in charge of digital services, said face-to-face interactions with government services would be greatly reduced.

"Think of it as a 100-point digital ID check that will unlock access to almost any government agency through a single portal such as a myGov account," Mr Keenan said.

The minister wants Australia to be a world leader in digital government, with almost all services to be available online by 2025.

Mr Keenan said having 30 different log-ins for government services is not good enough.

"The old ways of doing things, like forcing our customers to do business with us over the counter, must be re-imagined and refined," he said.

People will need to establish their digital identity once before being able to use it across services.

The first of several pilot programs using a "beta" version of what will be known as myGovID will begin in October.

The initial pilot will enable 100,000 participants to apply for a tax file number online, which Mr Keenan says will reduce processing time to a day from up to a month currently.

In a pilot starting from March next year, services including student identification and Centrelink will be connected to the digital identity.

Also from March 2019, 100,000 people will be able to use their digital identity to create their My Health Record online.

Mr Keenan says one face-to-face or over-the-counter transaction costs on average about $17 to process, while an online transaction can cost less than 40 cents.

The Human Services department will operate as the gateway between service providers and people.

"This is key to protecting privacy, as the exchange will act as a double-blind - service providers will not see any of the user's ID information and identity providers will not know what services each user is accessing," Mr Keenan said.

Labor digital economy spokesman Ed Husic said the Turnbull government was responsible for a "dirty dozen" of failed digital transformation failures, including the census and tax office website crashes.

"The biggest challenge confronting the Turnbull government is to quit its addiction to glitzy digital announcements and get stuck into properly delivering these multimillion-dollar projects," Mr Husic said.

The Australian Crime Intelligence Commission has suspended the contract for its beleaguered biometric identification services project in order to renegotiate it after the contractor failed to meet the deadline for completion and the cost ran $40 million over budget.

It follows a recommendation from a scathing independent review late last year that the contract be overhauled, the project be simplified and the timeline for delivery changed.

In 2016 ACIC (then CrimTrac) contracted NEC Australia to deliver a program that would replace the national automated fingerprint identification system, adding in facial recognition, palm prints and foot prints and would be available for use by police forces around the country.

Industry news website InnovationAus reported on Wednesday that NEC contractors had been marched from ACIC's premises on Monday June 4, after being told that the project had been suspended at the start of June.

It is believed the project has been suspended until Friday, while the negotiations over the contract take place.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers report last November seen by Fairfax Media said "a chain of decisions involving all levels and stakeholders" had led to the project running behind schedule and over budget.

It recommended that the scope of the project be simplified and standardised, and called it "highly challenged" and presenting a "high risk" to the commission.

"There is low confidence in likelihood of delivery which requires focus to achieve turnaround."

Poor communication, operational silos, limited collaboration and a failure to estimate the project's complexity had blown it off-track, the report said.

The report also recommended that the existing fingerprint database contract with Morpho be extended for 12 months after its expiry last month. It is not clear whether this contract was extended as recommended……

NEC Australia was also the contractor for the failed Australian apprentice management system, which was dumped by the Department of Education and Training last month due to critical defects, also found by a report by PwC.

InnovationAus, 12 June 2018:

NEC Australia won a $52 million tender for the Biometric Identification Services project in early 2016. The project involved replacing the ACIC’s National Automated Fingerprint Identification System with a “multi-modal biometric identification” service, incorporating fingerprints, footprints and facial recognition.

But the project is running behind schedule and is understood to be returning a high amount of false positives.

ABC News, 28 May 2018:

A massive case of mistaken identity in the UK is prompting calls for a rethink on plans to use facial recognition technology to track down terrorists and traffic offenders.

"If you have technology that is not up to scratch and it is bringing back high returns of false positives then you really need to go back to the drawing board," president-elect of the Law Council of Australia Arthur Moses told AM.

The comments follow revelations a London police trial of facial recognition technology generated 104 "alerts", of which 102 were false.

The technology scanned CCTV footage from the Notting Hill Carnival and Six Nations Rugby matches in London in search of wanted criminals.

Oi! Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and every dumb-witted member of his federal government as well as every premier and member of a state or territory government – when are you all going to wake up to the fact that digital is bloody dangerous?

For literally hundreds of years now, first in colonial, then in dominion and later in federation periods, Australia has relied on a 'paper and ink' processes to decide major political votes by its eligible citizens.

By and large this system has produced reliable results with regards to the people's will.

However, in the 21st Century government's blind infatuation with digital 'innovation' is now dangerously out-of-control.

This is evidence of just the latest red flag that Australian governments have ignored ……

The Mercury online, 30 June 2018:

The personal information of about 4000 Tasmanian voters has been leaked after a data breach on a third-party website linked to express votes, the state’s Electoral Commission has revealed.

Tasmanian Electoral Commissioner Andrew Hawkey said hackers had access to the names, dates of birth, emails and postal addresses of those who applied for an express vote at the recent state and Legislative Council elections.

“Early today, the Tasmanian Electoral Commission was informed by the Barcelona-based company Typeform, that an unknown third party had gained access to one of their servers and downloaded certain information,” he said.

“Typeform online forms have been used on the TEC website since 2015 for some of its election services. The breach involved an unknown attacker downloading a backup file.

“Typeform’s full investigation of the breach identified that data collected through five forms on the TEC website had been stolen.”

MORE: STATEMENT BY TYPEFORM

The breach was identified by Typeform on June 27 and shut down within half an hour of detection, Mr Hawkey said.

“The Electoral Commission will be contacting electors that used these services in the coming days to inform them of the breach,” Mr Hawkey said.

“The Electoral Commission apologises for the breach and will re-evaluate its collection procedures and internal security elements around its storage of electoral information for future events. The breach has no connection to the national or state electoral roll.”

Mr Hawkey said some of the stolen information had previously been made public, such as candidate statements for local government by-elections.

Typeform said it had responded immediately and had fixed the source of the breach to prevent further hacks.

“We have since been performing a full forensic investigation of the incident to be certain that this cannot happen again,” a statement on the Typeform website read.

“The results that were accessed are from a partial backup dated May 3, 2018. Results collected since May 3 are therefore safe and not compromised.’

Typeform reportedly provides services for some pretty big names, including Apple, Uber, Airbnb and Forbes.

The hack comes after up to 120,000 Tasmanian job seekers may have had their personal information compromised following a data breach reported by human resources company PageUp in early June.

That site was linked to the Tasmanian Government and the University of Tasmania.

The State Government is still waiting for a further response from PageUp but it is believed the breach was limited to names, addresses, emails and phone numbers.