STATE OF PLAY SEPTEMBER 2022: So you think that the pandemic is over on the Northern Rivers?

 

As at 23 September 2022 there were est. 873 confirmed active COVID-19 cases spread across the 7 local government areas within the Northern Rivers region, according to the COVID LIVE dashboard.

All became infected in the 14 days up to 23 September.

The 26 local postcodes with multiple confirmed COVID-19 active cases between 9 to 23 September are:

2460

2462

2463

2464

2466

2469

2470

2471

2472

2473

2474

2476

2477

2478

2479

2480

2481

2482

2483

2484

2485

2486

2487

2488

2489

2490

NOTE: Postcodes are sourced from NSW Health September 2022 COVID-19 case location data. 

BACKGROUND

The Financial Review, 18 September 2022, excerpt:

The new national weekly COVID-19 reporting regime has been heavily criticised, with claims it is a mishmash of different measures, definitions and timings, with some jurisdictions not reporting testing and with the new federal report replaced by a “useless” PowerPoint document.

INDaily, 23 September 2022, excerpt:

The change from daily to weekly data releases has been widely criticised within the health sector.

State figures released last Friday differed starkly to the federal data because of different start and end dates for counting.

Epidemiologist Adrian Esterman said he agreed with colleagues who described the new format for the data dump as “useless”.

Another scientist described it as a “dog’s breakfast”.

COVID-19 Pandemic 2020-2022: State of Play in New South Wales and Northern NSW

According to Professor Raina McIntyre (Global Biosecurity, Head of Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute UNSW New South Wales) on 2 April 2022, COVID-19 case numbers are bouncing around. Case numbers in New South Wales have increased since a low of 4,916 daily cases on 21 February 2022. “In the past week, they have ranged from 17,000 to more than 25,000 a day”.

“Part of the problem is the lack of testing and the lack of reporting. The message of “live with it” runs counter to the importance of reporting a positive test, if you can afford one. PCR testing remains restricted, so daily case numbers are a substantial underestimate and even the trends may not be accurate.” [my yellow highlighting]

As of 4pm 1 April 2022 there were 20,389 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New South Wales and a total of 268,761 active COVID-19 cases across the state the majority of which are being self-managed at home.

There were 1,302 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital as at 4pm 1 April, including 47 people in intensive care, 16 of whom require ventilation.

NSW Health reported the deaths of 13 people with COVID-19 – seven women and six men. Of these, 7 people were aged in their 70s, 5 people were aged in their 80s and 1 person was aged in their 90s.

Included in the day’s total of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases were 520 people in Northern NSW.

There were 14 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital with 2 in intensive care.

These 520 cases were all 7 local government areas within Northern NSW:

Tweed Shire – 149 cases across postcodes 2483, 2484, 2485,

Lismore City – 82 cases across postcodes 2472, 2480;

Clarence Valley – 79 cases across postcodes 2460, 2462, 2453, 2464, 2466;

Ballina Shire – 75 cases across postcodes

Byron Shire – 73 cases across postcodes 2479, 2481, 2482, 2483,

Richmond Valley – 51 cases across postcodes 2469, 2470, 2471, 2473;

Kyogle Shire – 11 cases across postcode 2474;

TOTAL 520

According to the federal Dept. of Health as of 31 March 2022 there were 229 COVID-19 outbreaks in residential aged care facilities involving 976 residents. 

A full list of these NSW facilities can be found at

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022/04/covid-19-outbreaks-in-australian-residential-aged-care-facilities-1-april-2022_0.pdf

On 10 February 2022, the Australian Government announced changes to the definition of fully vaccinated against COVID-19 so as to include vaccine booster doses required for those 16 years and over. The new term in use is “up to date” vaccination.

Therefore as of 1 April 2022 only 60.2% of people aged 16 years to 90 years and older, 79.5% of children aged 12 to 15 years and 26.9% of children aged 5 to 11 years are considered to be “up to date” (fully vaccinated).

The fact that New South Wales is falling behind recommended vaccination rates is a concern given this statement. 

ATAGI Statement, 26 March 2022:

ATAGI recommends an additional booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine to increase vaccine protection before winter for selected population groups (see Table 1) who are at greatest risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and who have received their primary vaccination and first booster dose. These groups are:

• Adults aged 65 years and older
• Residents of aged care or disability care facilities
• People aged 16 years and older with severe immunocompromise (as defined in the ATAGI statement on the use of a 3rd primary dose of COVID-19 vaccine in individuals who are severely immunocompromised)
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 years and older.

The additional winter booster dose can be given from 4 months or longer after the person has received their first booster dose, or from 4 months after a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, if infection occurred since the person’s first COVID-19 booster dose.

ATAGI recommends that the rollout of the additional booster dose for these groups starts from April 2022, coinciding with the rollout of the 2022 influenza vaccination program.

As of 4pm 2 April 2022 there were 16,807 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New South Wales and a total of ? active COVID-19 cases across the state the majority of which are being self-managed at home.

There were 1,355 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital as at 4pm 2 April, including 50 people in intensive care, 19 of whom require ventilation.

NSW Health reported the deaths of 11 people with COVID-19 – seven women and four men. Of these, 1 person was aged in their 30s, 1 person was in their 50s, 1 person was in their 70s, 6 people were in their 80s and 2 people were in their 90s.

Included in the day’s total of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases were 471 people in Northern NSW.

There were 14 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital with 1 in intensive care.

These 471 cases were all 7 local government areas within Northern NSW:

Tweed Shire – 144 cases across postcodes 2484, 2484, 2486, 2487, 2488, 2489;

Clarence Valley – 75 cases across postcodes 2460, 2462, 2462, 2464, 2465;

Byron Shire – 71 cases across postcodes 2479, 2481, 2482, 2483;

Lismore City – 67 cases across postcodes

Ballina Shire – 66 cases across postcodes 2478, 2479;

Richmond Valley – 41 cases across postcodes 2469, 2470, 2471, 2472, 2473;

Kyogle Shire – 5 cases across postcode 2474;

Tenterfield Shire – 2 cases across postcode 2476; Tenterfield is not in the NNSWLHD but shares a postcode so some cases are included here.

TOTAL 471

On deaths in Australia…..

At the tail end of the Delta wave in December 2021, where we could reasonably point to the start of the Omicron wave, we had 2006 deaths. The Omicron wave saw close to a 200 per cent increase in deaths compared with all previous waves combined, with 5928 deaths by March 29. This includes six deaths in children under 10, two in people aged 10-19 years, 16 in the group 20-29 and 52 deaths in people 30-39 years old. The largest single age group for deaths was in people 80-89 years, with 2025 deaths. Another 2100 or so deaths were recorded in people aged 40-79 years and the remainder – about 1400 deaths – in people aged 90 years and over. [Professor Raina McIntyre writing in The Saturday Paper, 2 April 2022]

As of 4pm 3 April 2022 there were 15,572 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New South Wales and a total of 266,110 active COVID-19 cases across the state the majority of which are being self-managed at home.

There were 1,418 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital as at 4pm 3 April, including 56 people in intensive care, 18 of whom require ventilation.

NSW Health reported the deaths of 6 people with COVID-19 – four women and two men. Of these, 1 person was aged in their 70s, 3 people were in their 80s and 2 people were in their 90s.

Included in the day’s total of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases were 437 people in Northern NSW.

There were 19 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital with 1 in intensive care.

These 437 cases were all 7 local government areas within Northern NSW:

Tweed Shire – 113 cases across postcodes 2483, 2484, 2486, 2486, 2487, 2488, 2489;

Ballina Shire – 83 cases across postcodes 2477, 2478;

Byron Shire – 69 cases across postcodes 2479, 2481, 2482, 2483;

Clarence Valley – 62 cases across postcodes 2460, 2463, 2464;

Lismore City – 55 cases across postcode 2479;

Richmond Valley – 43 cases across postcodes 2469, 2479, 2471, 2472, 2473;

Kyogle Shire – 12 cases across postcode 2474.

TOTAL 437

A reminder......

NSW Health states: 

Everyone is urged to take simple precautions to protect each other from COVID-19, such as:

• use a mask in indoor settings where you cannot maintain a safe physical distance from others

• get your booster vaccine

• get a test and isolate immediately if you have any COVID symptoms

• clean your hands regularly.

SOURCES:

• 2022 media releases from NSW Health

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/2022-nsw-health.aspx

• COVID-19 in NSW - up to 4pm

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/stats-nsw.aspx#today

• Australian Dept. of Health, Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

https://www.health.gov.au/health-alerts/covid-19

BACKGROUND

Current SARS-C0V-2 Variants of Concern in Australia

B.1.617.2 (Delta) and sub-lineages AY.*

B.1.1.529 (Omicron) and sub-lineages BA.*

SARS-CoV-2 Variants Which Decided To Call Australia Home

SARS-CoV-2 Variant A.2.2, Identified 2020-03-17, Australian lineage.

Australia 92.0%, New_Zealand 2.0%, Canada 2.0%, United States of America 2.0%, United Kingdom 1.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant D.2, Identified 2020-03-19, Alias of B.1.1.25.2, Australia.

Australia 100.0%, United States of America 0.0%, Chile 0.0%, Mexico 0.0%, United Kingdom 0.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant D.3, Identified 2020-06-14, Alias of B.1.1.25.3, Australia.

Australia 100.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant B.1.1.136, Identified 2020-06-03, Australian lineage.

Australia 86.0%, Turkey 7.0%, Russia 5.0%, United Kingdom 2.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant B.1.1.142, Identified 2020-03-03, Australian lineage.

Australia 39.0%, United Kingdom 12.0%, Iceland 12.0%, Switzerland 6.0%, United States of America 6.0%.

___________________________

Tweet of the week

NSW: You have a problem that you need to do something about. pic.twitter.com/Yimr6DrDFX

— Alan Baxter ♛ (@AlanBixter) March 9, 2022

Just in time for Christmas the Morrison Government's risible greenhouse gas emission projections up to 2030 have been released

Well the federal parliament closed its doors for the year in early December so there is going to be no questioning of the Morrison Government on the floor of the House of Representatives until 4 February 2020.

It follows that it was time to release some of the government untruths packaged between paper covers or boxed in a PDF - just in time for Christmas.

On the first Tuesday of December the Morrison Government released
Australia’s emissions projections 2019, accompanied by a misleading fanfare from the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction & Liberal MP for Hume, Angus Taylor.

In part this emissions fairytale tells us that:

Australia’s 2030 target (26–28 per cent below 2005 levels) 

• Emissions in 2030 are projected to be 511 Mt CO2 -e, 52 Mt CO2 -e lower than the 2018 estimate for 2030 of 563 Mt CO2 -e. 

• To achieve Australia’s 2030 target of 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels, emissions reductions of 395 to 462 Mt CO2 -e between 2021 and 2030 are required. When overachievement of 411 Mt CO2 -e from previous targets is included, Australia will overachieve by 16 Mt CO2 -e (26 per cent reduction) and will require 51 Mt CO2 -e of cumulative emissions reduction between 2021 and 2030 to meet the 28 per cent reduction target. 

• Compared to the 2018 projections, the downward revision in the 2019 projections reflects: 

– the inclusion of the Climate Solutions Fund which will reduce emissions by 103 Mt CO2 -e, particularly in the Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector;

 – the inclusion of other measures in the Climate Solutions Package including energy efficiency measures in the electricity and direct combustion sectors; 

– stronger renewables deployment – due to increased uptake of small and mid-scale solar photovoltaics (PV) projected by the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) and Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), and the inclusion of 50 per cent renewable energy targets in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory; and 

– updated forecasts of electricity demand.

Sounds good until you look at the numbers.

In the original Kyoto Agreement Australia's baseline for accounting greenhouse gas emissions was 1990 and total national greenhouse gas emissions for that year were recorded as 610MT CO2-e.

Australia came away unhappy with the conference outcome, so bitched and griped at every turn until the baseline was moved, eventually being extended out to 2005.

In 2005 Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions were 611MT CO2-e if land use is included. The total changes to 522MT CO2-e if land use is excluded. 

The predictions for 2030 in the recent emissions projections are 511MT CO2-e land use included and 521MT CO2-e land use excluded.

There is a 100 point drop in the 2030 projection including land use and a 1 point drop with land use excluded.

It's  still a reduction right? Even if the Morrison Government got there by using an accounting trick?

Well no. Because - even with the carryover 'carbon credits' accounting trick which allows the the Morrison Government to subtract a total of 411MT CO-e from greenhouse gas emissions across selected annual totals - Australia is not meeting the undertakings made to the international community at the U.N. 2015 Paris climate change conference (COP 21).

In fact we have spent the six years between 2013 (when emissions total was 530MT CO2-e) and 2019 (when emissions total was 532MT CO2-e) just treading water, while the days and nights became hotter, our rivers ran dry and our forests burned. 

Next year emissions are expected to rise again to what they were in 2014, 534MT CO2-e.

In Paris Australia agreed to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030.

That would mean that Australia's emissions target in 2030 should be somewhere between 440MT CO2-e and 450MT CO2-e.

There is a shortfall in meeting those targets.

With land use included the target shortfall in projections is between est. 59MT CO2-e and 71MT CO2-e. With land use excluded the shortfall is between est. 69MT CO2-e and 81MT CO2-e.

That is a lot of mega tonnes. Especially if we were to correct the Morrison Govenment's creative accounting and remove this carryover credits from the equation.

Then the 2030 emissions reduction target shortfall would probably grow by arround est. 80-84 per cent.

Angus Taylor attended the 2-13 December 2019 UN Madrid Climate Change Conference (COP25) armed with his copy of that creative government accounting - probably believing that representatives of other nations would find his spiel believable. Though I rather suspect whenever he was at the other end of the room a number would have had their heads together quietly laughing at him. 

Notes:

Emissions are recorded as totalling 532MT CO2-e In 2018 and 2019. However using Morrison & Co's accounting trick it is reduced to a total of 328MT CO2-e in 2018 and -6MT CO2-e in 2019. See http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/4aa038fc-b9ee-4694-99d0-c5346afb5bfb/files/aust-emissions-projects-chart-data-2019.xlsx.

All data the Australia's emissions projections 2019 relies on can be found at -
http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/publications/emissions-projections-2019.

If readers want emissions totals & projections per year from 1990 to 2030 in a more digestible form, there is currently an interactive graph at -
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2019/dec/10/the-coalition-isnt-being-honest-about-the-climate-crisis-but-neither-is-labor.

Lobby group giving farmers a bad name

The Guardian, 2 May 2019:

The Queensland farm lobby AgForce has deleted more than a decade worth of data from a government program that aims to improve water quality in the Great Barrier Reef, in response to state government moves to introduce new reef protection laws.

Guardian Australia revealed in June that the state’s auditor general had raised concerns that agriculture industry groups had refused to share data from the “best management practices” program due to privacy concerns.

In recent months, AgForce and others had campaigned against the imposition of new reef protection regulations, which set sediment “load limits” in reef catchments and impose new standards on farmers.

The proposed new laws, which have been introduced to state parliament, also include a provision to allow the environment minister to obtain data from agricultural groups……

The Queensland environment minister, Leeanne Enoch, told the Courier-Mail the decision flushed “so much work and the taxpayer dollars that have been supporting it out to sea”.

“AgForce often claims that they are true environmentalists but this decision is not the action of a group that wants to protect the environment,” she said.

The Queensland audit office last year found that the success of the best management practices program could not be properly measured because the agricultural groups that receive government funding would not provide data on whether producers had actually improved their practices.

“This detailed information is currently held by the industry groups,” the report said. “Despite this work being funded by government, the information is not provided to government due to privacy concerns from the industry.

“These data restrictions mean government does not have full visibility of the progress made and cannot measure the degree of practice change or assess the value achieved from its investment of public funds.

“This means that the reported proportion of lands managed using best management practice systems could be overstated.”

The large-scale personal data release Facebook Inc didn't tell the world about

“Back in 2004, when a 19-year-old Zuckerberg had just started building Facebook, he sent his Harvard friends a series of instant messages in which he marvelled at the fact that 4,000 people had volunteered their personal information to his nascent social network. “People just submitted it ... I don’t know why ... They ‘trust me’ ... dumb fucks.”  [The Guardian, 21 March 2018]

“Christopher Wylie, who worked for data firm Cambridge Analytica, reveals how personal information was taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters in order to target them with personalised political advertisements. At the time the company was owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Donald Trump’s key adviser, Steve Bannon. Its CEO is Alexander Nix”  [The Guardian,18 March 2018]

Alexander James Ashburner Nix is listed by Companies House UK as the sole director and CEO of Cambridge Analytica (UK) Limited (formerly SCL USA Limited incorporated 6 January 2015). The majority of shares in the company are controlled by SCL Elections Limited (incorprated 17 October 2012) whose sole director and shareholder appears to be Alexander Nix. Mr. Nix in his own name is also a shareholder in Cambridge Analytica (UK) Limited.

Companies House lists ten companies with which Mr. Nix is associated.

NOTE: In July 2014 an Alastair Carmichael Macwillson incorporated Cambridge Analytica Limited, a company which is still active. Macwilliam styles himself as a management consultant and cyber security professional.

Nix's Cambridge Analytica was reported as indirectly financed by leading Republican donor Robert Mercer during the 2015 primaries and 2016 US presidential campaign.

On 15 December 2017 The Wall Street Journal reported that:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has requested that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign, turn over documents as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, according to people familiar with the matter.

Concerns about Cambridge Analytica and its relationship with Facebook Inc. resurfaced this month.

The Guardian, 18 March 2018:

The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box….

Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals.

Recode, 17 March 2018:

Facebook is in another awkward situation. The company claims that it wasn’t breached, and that while it has suspended Cambridge Analytica from its service, the social giant is not at fault. Facebook contends that its technology worked exactly how Facebook built it to work, but that bad actors, like Cambridge Analytica, violated the company’s terms of service.

On the other hand, Facebook has since changed those terms of service to cut down on information third parties can collect, essentially admitting that its prior terms weren’t very good.

So how did Cambridge Analytica get Facebook data on some 50 million people?

Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, tweeted a lengthy defense of the company, which also included a helpful explanation for how this came about…..

Facebook offers a number of technology tools for software developers, and one of the most popular is Facebook Login, which lets people simply log in to a website or app using their Facebook account instead of creating new credentials. People use it because it’s easy — usually one or two taps — and eliminates the need for people to remember a bunch of unique username and password combinations.

When people use Facebook Login, though, they grant the app’s developer a range of information from their Facebook profile — things like their name, location, email or friends list. This is what happened in 2015, when a Cambridge University professor named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan created an app called “thisisyourdigitallife” that utilized Facebook’s login feature. Some 270,000 people used Facebook Login to create accounts, and thus opted in to share personal profile data with Kogan.

Back in 2015, though, Facebook also allowed developers to collect some information on the friend networks of people who used Facebook Login. That means that while a single user may have agreed to hand over their data, developers could also access some data about their friends. This was not a secret — Facebook says it was documented in their terms of service — but it has since been updated so that this is no longer possible, at least not at the same level of detail.

Through those 270,000 people who opted in, Kogan was able to get access to data from some 50 million Facebook users, according to the Times. That data trove could have included information about people’s locations and interests, and more granular stuff like photos, status updates and check-ins.

The Times found that Cambridge Analytica’s data for “roughly 30 million [people] contained enough information, including places of residence, that the company could match users to other records and build psychographic profiles.”

This all happened just as Facebook intended for it to happen. All of this data collection followed the company’s rules and guidelines.

Things became problematic when Kogan shared this data with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook contends this is against the company’s terms of service. According to those rules, developers are not allowed to “transfer any data that you receive from us (including anonymous, aggregate, or derived data) to any ad network, data broker or other advertising or monetization-related service.”

As Stamos tweeted out Saturday (before later deleting the tweet): “Kogan did not break into any systems, bypass any technical controls, our use a flaw in our software to gather more data than allowed. He did, however, misuse that data after he gathered it, but that does not retroactively make it a ‘breach.’”….

The problem here is that Facebook gives a lot of trust to the developers who use its software features. The company’s terms of service are an agreement in the same way any user agrees to use Facebook: The rules represent a contract that Facebook can use to punish someone, but not until after that someone has already broken the rules.

CNN tech, 19 March 2018:

Kogan's company provided data on millions of Americans to Cambridge Analytica beginning in 2014. The data was gathered through a personality test Facebook application built by Kogan. When Facebook users took the test they gave Kogan access to their data, including demographic information about them like names, locations, ages and genders, as well as their page "likes," and some of their Facebook friends' data.

There is some evidence that Cambridge Analytica is a bad actor according to a report by 4News on 19 March 2018:

Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica – the data company that credits itself with Donald Trump’s presidential victory – have been secretly filmed saying they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers.

In an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix said the British firm secretly campaigns in elections across the world. This includes operating through a web of shadowy front companies, or by using sub-contractors.

In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”.

In another he said: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”

Offering bribes to public officials is an offence under both the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Cambridge Analytica operates in the UK and is registered in the United States.

The admissions were filmed at a series of meetings at London hotels over four months, between November 2017 and January 2018. An undercover reporter for Channel 4 News posed as a fixer for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.

Mr Nix told our reporter: “…we’re used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows, and I look forward to building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you.”

Along with Mr Nix, the meetings also included Mark Turnbull, the managing director of CA Political Global, and the company’s chief data officer, Dr Alex Tayler.

Mr Turnbull described how, having obtained damaging material on opponents, Cambridge Analytica can discreetly push it onto social media and the internet.

He said: “… we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda’, the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’.”

It should be noted that Cambridge Analytica has set up shop in Australia and the person named in the filing documents as the only shareholder was Allan Lorraine. Cambridge Analyitica is said to have met with representatives of the Federal Liberal Party in March 2017.

Despite denials to the contrary, It is possible that Cambridge Analytica has been consulted by state and federal Liberals since mid-2015 and, along with i360, was consulted by South Australian Liberals concerning targeted campaigning in relation to their 2018 election strategy.

Once the possibility of Australian connection became known, the Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner made preliminary inquiries.

News.com.au. 20 March 2018:

Facebook could be fined if Australians' personal information was given to controversial researchers Cambridge Analytica, the privacy watchdog says.

Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim says he is aware profile information was taken and used without authorisation.

"My office is making inquiries with Facebook to ascertain whether any personal information of Australians was involved," Mr Pilgrim said on Tuesday.

"I will consider Facebook's response and whether any further regulatory action is required.".

Cambridge Analytica is facing claims it used data from 50 million Facebook users to develop controversial political campaigns for Donald Trump and others.

The Privacy Act allows the commissioner to apply to the courts for a civil penalty order if it finds serious breaches of the law......

UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is also investigating the breach, promising it will be "far reaching" and any criminal or civil enforcement actions arising from it would be "pursued vigorously".

Facebook Inc's initial response to this issue was a denial of resonsibility which did not play well in financial markets

The Guardian, 21 March 2018:

It appears that while Facebook had been aware of what the Observer described as “unprecedented data harvesting” for two years, it did not notify the affected users.

What’s more, Facebook has displayed a remarkable lack of contrition in the immediate aftermath of the Observer’s revelations. Instead of accepting responsibility, its top executives argued on Twitter that the social network had done nothing wrong. “This was unequivocally not a data breach,” Facebook vice-president Andrew Bosworth tweeted on Saturday. “People chose to share their data with third party apps and if those third party apps did not follow the data agreements with us/users it is a violation. No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”

In a sense, Facebook’s defence to the Cambridge Analytica story was more damning than the story itself. Tracy Chou, a software engineer who has interned at Facebook and worked at a number of prominent Silicon Valley companies, agrees that there wasn’t a hack or breach of Facebook’s security. Rather, she explains, “this is the way that Facebook works”. The company’s business model is to collect, share and exploit as much user data as possible; all without informed consent. Cambridge Analytica may have violated Facebook’s terms of service, but Facebook had no safeguards in place to stop them.

While some Facebook executives were busy defending their honour on Twitter over the weekend, it should be noted that Zuckerberg remained deafeningly silent. On Monday, Facebook’s shares dropped almost 7%, taking $36bn (£25.7bn) off the company’s valuation. Still, Zuckerberg remained silent. If you’re going to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right? Apparently, silence is Zuck’s way of being mature.