A statement from some of the health experts who first told Australians that the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1-S) was perfectly safe to administer to all adults, then 'modified' that assurance to safe for all adults 50 years of age & older and now announces that it is only safe for those adults 60 years of age and older

 

Australian Technical Advisory Group, statement excerpts,,

17 June 2021:

A statement from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) on the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in response to new vaccine safety concerns.

Summary

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommends the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine (Comirnaty) as the preferred vaccine for those aged 16 to under 60 years. This updates the previous preferential recommendation for Comirnaty over COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca in those aged 16 to under 50 years. The recommendation is revised due to a higher risk and observed severity of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) related to the use of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine observed in Australia in the 50-59 year old age group than reported internationally and initially estimated in Australia.

For those aged 60 years and above, the individual benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine are greater than in younger people. The risks of severe outcomes with COVID-19 increase with age and are particularly high in older unvaccinated individuals. The benefit of vaccination in preventing COVID-19 with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca outweighs the risk of TTS in this age group and underpins its ongoing use in this age group.

People of any age without contraindications who have had their first dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca without any serious adverse events should receive a second dose of the same vaccine. This is supported by data indicating a substantially lower rate of TTS following a second COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca dose in the United Kingdom (UK).

Background

The Australian COVID-19 vaccination program has the overarching goal of protecting all people in Australia from the harm caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

On 8 April 2021, ATAGI recommended that Comirnaty was the preferred vaccine for people under the age of 50 years due to local and international reports of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) following COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca.

Based on available international data at that time, the estimated risk of TTS was 4-6 per million cases following a first dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca. Given the ongoing risk of COVID-19 outbreaks, low vaccine coverage, and increasing rate of severe COVID-19 outcomes in older individuals, it was considered that the benefits of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca outweighed the risk in those over 50 years. As such, no preferential recommendation for either vaccine was made in this age group. This advice was reinforced on 23 April 2021 and has been reviewed weekly by ATAGI since then.

Principles underpinning the revised recommendations

In making the decision to revise the previous recommendation, ATAGI has considered several factors that have been monitored closely, including:

• The potential risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 over the coming months

• Minimising harms to people due to adverse events following immunisation

• Australian data on the age-specific risks and severity of TTS following COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca

• The expected vaccine supply over the months ahead

• The impacts of any change in recommendation on the COVID-19 vaccine program……

The risks of TTS after COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca

From early April to 16 June 2021, 60 cases of confirmed or probable TTS have been reported in Australia. This includes an additional seven cases reported in the past week in people between 50-59 years, increasing the rate in this age group from 1.9 to 2.7 per 100,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses. The revised estimates of risk associated with first doses of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca are listed in the table below.

TTS is a serious condition in a proportion of individuals who develop it. The overall case fatality rate in Australia (3%; 2 deaths among 60 cases) is lower than has been reported internationally. This is likely to reflect increased detection due to heightened awareness, as well as early diagnosis and treatment. A spectrum of severity of illness has been reported in Australia, from fatal cases and those with significant morbidity, to relatively milder cases. TTS appears to be more severe in younger people.

There are different ways in which the severity of TTS can be measured. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines “tier 1” cases as clots involving unusual sites, such as the veins of the brain (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis) or abdomen (splanchnic thrombosis); these are generally more severe and may potentially lead to long term health complications. In those under 60 years, 52% of TTS episodes are occurring in tier 1 sites compared with 28% in those 60 years and older. Other markers of severity include the requirement for intensive care (33% of TTS in those under 60 years; 15% of TTS cases in those 60 years and older), and fatal cases (both occurring in those < 60 years)……

Second dose recommendations for COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca

ATAGI supports completion of a two-dose schedule with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, based on current evidence. The risk of TTS following a second dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is much lower than the risk following a first dose. The UK has reported 23 TTS cases in 15.7 million people after receiving a second dose, an estimated rate of 1.5 per million second doses (compared to a reported risk of 14.2 per million first doses in the UK).

People of any age without contraindications who have had their first dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca without any serious adverse events should receive the second dose.

Recommendations

• ATAGI advises that Comirnaty is preferred over COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca from the age of 16 to under 60 years. This is based on recent data regarding TTS cases in Australia and a reassessment of current age-specific risks and benefits of vaccination.

• ATAGI considers the benefit of vaccination in preventing COVID-19 with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca outweighs the risk of TTS in people aged 60 and above. For this age group, the benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine are greater than in younger people. The risks of severe outcomes with COVID-19 increase with age and are particularly high in older unvaccinated individuals.

• COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca can be used in adults aged under 60 years for whom Comirnaty is not available, the benefits are likely to outweigh the risks for that individual and the person has made an informed decision based on an understanding of the risks and benefits.

• People of any age without contraindications who have had their first dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca without any serious adverse events should receive the second dose.

• ATAGI reinforces the importance of providing clear communications to people who have received or are considering COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, and notes guidance documents for consumers, for primary care and for hospitals are being continually revised to accommodate this new recommendation.....

Read full statement here. 

It is noted that of the 60 cases (29 men and 31 women) to date with confirmed and probable adverse reactions to the AstraZeneca vaccine resulting in thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS):

• the majority of people diagnosed with TTS are over 50 years of age - only 6 people aged under 50 years had a TTS diagnosis; 

• 23 of the 60 individuals listed were diagnosed with the most severe forms of TTS (CDS classification Tier 1);

• 6 of those with the most severe forms of TTS were aged in 60-65 age group through to the 80+ age group; 

• Across all age groups, from under 30 years upwards, it was the 70-79 age grouping which had the highest number of TTS diagnoses at 19 cases (comprising Tier 1, Tier 2 & unclassified), with an est. risk rate of 1.8 TTS cases per 100,000 AstraZeneca first doses; and

• There were 12 new confirmed and probable cases of TTS attributed to the AstraZeneca vaccine in the week of 11-17 June 2021 in Australia, with 5 of those cases being in individuals over 60 years of age and 7 cases in individuals below 60 years of age.

Global insurance industry has begun to retreat from regions badly affected by climate change

Almost as soon as federal, state and local governments around the world began to consider what climate change might mean to them, it became obvious the insurance industry had been do the same for some time and had considered its options - at one point expressing a view that residential premises within the coastal fringes might become uninsurable and the land on which these homes were built would be rendered worthless by climate change.

Now QBE is turning that prediction into a reality.......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 February 2020:

Global insurance giant QBE has warned climate change poses a material threat to its business and the entire economy as its chief executive Pat Regan said premiums were at risk of becoming too high in areas exposed to repeated, extreme weather. 

QBE has been forced to cut operations in countries where the climate risk is too high and Mr Regan said severe weather means customers in certain [areas] may be priced out of certain types of insurance in Australia and around the world. 

"We got out of places like the Philippines, Thailand, Chile, Puerto Rico [where] it was just too much climate change weather impact risk there that the risks just weren't worth it," Mr Regan said. 

Mr Regan said there had always been parts of the world that were difficult to insure, but as floods and fires become have dominated headlines this summer, this risk was increasing across "swathes of Australia" and could potentially price out customers from home and business property insurance. 

Mr Regan said climate change was a "big topic" in the sector, requiring the insurance giant to "up its game on a number of fronts". QBE boosted its reinsurance program for catastrophic events to $2 billion in a process that would be reassessed each year, Mr Regan said. 

"What that means is you could have a one-in-200-year storm and we'd be protected," Mr Regan said. 

"Whatever your more broad thoughts on climate change are, the evidence is clearly there that the frequency and severity of weather events is increasing over time. 

"The evidence is there for all to see that the amount of weather events globally, not just in Australia, is consistently rising and most of the worst years on record have happened in the last 10 years."  [my yellow highlighting]

ABC News, 3 January 2020:

....the number of “uninsurable” addresses in Australia is projected to double by the turn of the century to nearly 720,000 — or one in 20 — if nothing is done to address escalating risk from extreme weather and climate change. Thousands more will see their insurance premiums double or even triple within decades, the data reveals.....

In Newcastle-Maitland, NSW, the number of uninsurable addresses will rise five-fold by 2100, to nearly one in seven.....

On the Gold Coast, increased risk from flooding and inundation will push the number of uninsurable addresses to 64,000 by 2100 — or one in six. 

In Palm Beach, Broadbeach Waters and Bundall, more than half of addresses are projected to become “uninsurable” by 2100.

Financial Review, 27 October 2019:

Extreme weather has been making strata property in north Queensland very difficult to insure....

Strata insurance is the insurance that covers entire apartment complexes, as opposed to individual houses. As one insurer told The Australian Financial Review, large complexes pose much higher risks than single houses.....

Assessing the risk to these properties is difficult, and a number of insurers have simply stopped trying. Suncorp, one of the big three ASX-listed general insurers, falls into this category. It no longer underwrites complexes with more than 10 units, or an insured value of more than $5 million. QBE, Zurich and the major reinsurers have also pulled out.

Australian Parliamentary Library, Records of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, "Inquiry into climate change and environmental impacts on coastal communities", October 2009:

Climate change is projected to have a major impact on the frequency of extreme weather events, with the coastal zone being particularly vulnerable in this regard because of the combined effects of sea level rise and storm surge/flooding events. 

In its submission to the inquiry, the peak body for the insurance industry, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), noted that: 

more than 425,000 Australian addresses are below 4 metres above mean sea level and within 3km of the current shoreline. Within the Greater Sydney region (Newcastle to Wollongong), 46,000 addresses are identified as being within 1km of the shoreline and with elevations less than 3m. 

The ICA further observed that the majority of these vulnerable addresses are located near ocean-connected coastal waters—that is, alongside lakes, river banks and estuaries—and that properties in coastal settlements which are also on inland floodplains ‘can be liable to both river and ocean inundation, often concurrently’. 

Climate change could have adverse impacts on insurance affordability and availability, compounding the problem of under-insurance: 

Around 23 per cent of Australian households (1.8 million) are currently without building or contents insurance. As insurance premiums rise, more households may opt out of insuring, putting an added burden on governments and communities when disasters occur.

Five-year assessment of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan released

Shorter version of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan five-year assessment – behind schedule, badly managed by governments and agencies, based on too many false assumptions, evidence of unintended outcomes, not delivering on environmental needs, past excessive water extraction admitted, key risks not properly managed, expensive and no longer fully fit for purpose so in need of reform.

Australian Government Productivity Commission, 25 January 2019:

Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Five-year assessment

Inquiry report

This report was sent to Government on 19 December 2018 and publicly released on 25 January 2019.

The report makes findings on progress to date in implementing the Basin Plan and recommendations on actions required to ensure effective achievement of Basin Plan outcomes. Most of our recommendations involve incremental improvements to the current arrangements. Others are to provide the strong foundations needed for the Plan to succeed — sound governance, good planning, and effective and adaptive management.

Download the overview

Overview and recommendations (PDF - 1085 Kb)

Overview and recommendations (Word - 490 Kb)

Download the report

Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Five-year assessment - Inquiry report (PDF - 4373 Kb)

Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Five-year assessment - Inquiry report (Word - 1938 Kb)

Noble Caledonia Limited changes its mind about Port of Yamba-Clarence River?

noble-caledonia.co.uk, 27 May 2017

Noble Caledonia Limited’s “Australian Coastal Odyssey” twenty-two day cruise from 9-31 October 2018 - flying from London to Cairns to Port Moresby, then sailing through the Torres Strait and down the east coast of Australia to berth in Melbourne before returning home on 31 October - is still being advertised online and it just got a lot cheaper.

In an apparent effort to fill cabins aboard the vessel MV Caledonian Sky, the UK-based cruise line is now offering across-the-board discounts of £1,000 per two-person cabin.

There has also been a change in the ship’s itinerary for Day 16 - 24 October this year.

All mention of entry into Port of Yamba-Clarence River was removed from the cruise line's website sometime between 21 and 27 May and, Trial Bay, South West Rocks inserted instead for both its October 2018 “Australian Coastal Odyssey” and October 2019 “Australian Coastal Discovery” east coast cruises.

Caledonian Sky has already booked port berths/moorings in Queensland and Victoria as well as for two of the six official ports along the NSW leg of the 2018 cruise – Port of Newcastle (7am 25 October) and Port of Eden (7am 27 October). There is no published booking for Port of Yamba which requires piloted entry for sea-going ships.

Which has set Lower Clarence residents to wondering about the reasons for this welcome change of plan.

Some think it may be a public relations feint by Noble Caledonia to dampen expression of local concerns and it may yet decide to slip into the Clarence River estuary on or about 24 October this year.

Others point to the level of risk always associated with bringing ships like the 5-deck high, 91 metre long, est. 4,200 gross tonne Caledonian Sky across the entrance bar while avoiding collision with the culturally important Native Title reef “Dirrangun” and, the possibility that the cruise line’s insurance company might not be impressed if that risk were to be realised and it was faced with a second reef maritime incident in less than nineteen months involving the same ship.

Given the protracted negotiations between Noble Caledonia, its insurer and the Indonesian Government over a reported £350 million ‘fine’ incurred when the Caledonian Sky damaged over 18,000 sq. metres of pristine coral reef in the Raja Ampat island chain in March 2017, it is understandable that Noble Caledonia Limited may have reassessed the original “Australian Coastal Odyssey” itinerary and decided it preferred a less problematic short-stay mooring for Day 16.

It is getting harder and harder to believe Facebook Inc's denials of intentional harm

The fact that Facebook Inc. re-named the street in which it is headquartered "1 Hacker Way" should have been a clue to this social media giant's business ethos but it obviously didn't register with national governments and everyday Internet users. 

By the time All tech reported this on 11 November 2016 we were all a little more informed, but Facebook was still trying to pull the wool over our eyes:

Mark Zuckerberg says the notion that fake news influenced the U.S. presidential election is "a pretty crazy idea."

The Facebook CEO is finding himself in a unique position in this election cycle. Many news organizations have come under fire for their coverage of the campaign. Now Facebook is getting it too, as a modern media company that does not vet fake news from its News Feed and that, critics argue, allows users to stay in information bubbles that reinforce existing prejudices.

Zuckerberg took both these criticisms head-on yesterday, at a conference called Techonomy. (You can find the full interview on his Facebook feed.)

He says hoaxes existed before his platform was created. They aren't new, and people who say misinformation is why Donald Trump won simply do not get it. "There's a profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could have voted the way that they did is because they saw some fake news," Zuckerberg says.

He also says his company has studied fake news and found it's a "very small volume" of the content on Facebook. He did not specify if that content is more or less viral or impactful than other information.

Denials of a dangerously lax attitude to risk in Facebook Inc.'s business model continued to be made as more information surfaced......

BuzzFeed, 30 March 2018

The Age, 31 March 2018:

In a 2016 employee memo that was leaked this week, a Facebook executive defended the company's questionable data mining practices and championed the growth of social media at any cost - apparently even death.

Users in the US sue Facebook for not protecting personal data of the 50 million social network account owners whose data ended up at the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

"Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies," company vice president Andrew Bosworth wrote in the memo, according to BuzzFeed News, which published it Thursday. "Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good."….

Bosworth, who oversaw Facebook's advertising and business platform at the time and is now in charge of the company's virtual reality department, has acknowledged writing the message but said he intended only to start a debate. "I didn't agree with it even when I wrote it," he wrote on Twitter after BuzzFeed published its report.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who is already facing a public relations crisis over accusations that the company mishandled millions of users' private data, disavowed the memo.

"Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things," Zuckerberg said in a statement, using Bosworth's nickname. "This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We've never believed the ends justify the means."…….

The 418-word memo is framed around Zuckerberg's often-stated mission to connect the entire world through Facebook, which Bosworth cites as the company's ultimate and unchangeable goal - whether those connections let users fall in love, attack each other or, in the memo's most extreme example, coordinate a terrorist attack.

"That's why all the work we do in growth is justified," Bosworth wrote. "All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it."

BuzzFeed noted that the memo was written almost immediately after a man was shot to death while streaming live video of himself with Facebook Live, and a few days before a Palestinian teenager was accused of killing an Israeli girl after praising terrorists on Facebook.

These deaths were a prelude to a string of other gruesome and violent incidents that appeared in videos and live streams on the social network. A man posted a Facebook video of himself killing someone last April. A month later, a man soaked himself in kerosene, lit himself on fire and used Facebook Live to stream video of his self-immolation.

Then we saw Zuckerberg donning a suit as he did the rounds in Washington DC. Appearing before a Joint Senate Committees on the Judiciary & Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s  Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data hearing and a House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee's Facebook: Transparency and Use of Consumer Data hearing.

There was an expectation that during these hearings Zuckerberg would reveal the full extent of Facebook's data collection and retention, as well as explain why he allowed third party apps to collect data without the knowledge and/or fully informed consent of up to est, 2 billion Facebook users.

His disingenuous witness statement published ahead of his appearances contains this gem:

Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring.....

But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here. So now we have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility.

However, if one reads through the full witness statement it is clear that Facebook Inc. is not responding out of a genuine realisation of its ethical failures or wrongdoing, but is essentially responding to the sharp fall in its stock value which began last month.

It clearly intends to still allow third party apps access to Facebook user accounts and there is no guarantee that the amount of personal data that can be extracted by these apps will be limited to a digital version of 'name, rank and serial number' or that Facebook users will have given fully-informed consent for this data extraction.

This reading of Facebook Inc.'s intentions was reinforced by Mark Zuckerberg testimony before both the Senate and House committees.

He came obviously rehearsed by lawyers and tightly scripted......

Time Magazine, Facebook aide closing notes during hearing recess,11 April 2018

Brief summary of Mark Zuckerber notes here.

Although in his spoken testimony Zuckerberg commenced with yet another apology, in my opinion he frequently dissembled, mislead, misdirected, contradicted a number of his own and Facebook management's public previous statements, lied by omission and sometimes almost defiantly told what appeared to be bald-faced lies.

NOTE: Readers can form their own opinion of Zuckerberg's testimony courtesy of The Washington Post at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.032d3cf2a0e8 
& https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11/transcript-of-zuckerbergs-appearance-before-house-committee/?utm_term=.cd5f1228fec4.

However Facebook Inc. is not just relying on its founder and CEO's recent testimony to ward of further regulation of its businss practices.

Since 2011 Facebook Inc. has had a registered Political Action Commttee (PAC) which has donated to the 2012, 2014, and 2016 US election campaigns. 

As well as in-house and paid lobbyists who spent in total US$11.5 million in 2017 alone fighting against further Internet regulations including any proposed strengthening of privacy protections. Add that to the company's US$8.6M lobbying spend in 2016, $9.8M in 2015, $9.3M in 2014, $6.4M in 2013, $3.8M in 2012, $1.3M in 2011, $351,390 in 2010 and $207,878 in 2009 and one can see that Facebook Inc. is increasingly determined to have the ear of US lawmakers.

Although how successful the social media giant's lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill will be in 2018, it is clear that in has been partially successful in protecting the market value of its shares.

To date this year Facebook Inc.'s ordinary share price has gone from a closing high of US$193.09 (01.02.18) to a low of $152.22 (27.03.18) in the wake of revelations about the company's business practices and, then gradually climbed over the course of 17 days by $12.3 to close at $164.52 (13.03.18), according to Yahoo! Finance.

As for the number of active Facebook users - only time will tell if current figures hold over time. With trust in Facebook Inc. at a new low it will not be surprising to find the number of accounts showing daily activity falling over time as users become more wary of this platform.

The thirty-eight minutes in which Hawaii thought Trump had finally pushed North Korea too far

The New Yorker, 13 January 2018:

Residents of Hawaii received this warning on their smartphone screens 

Saturday morning from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

Photograph Caleb Jones / AP

A little after 8 a.m. today, Hawaii standard time, an alert was sent to cell phones in Hawaii: “ballistic missile threat inbound to hawaii. seek immediate shelter. this is not a drill.” The message was also broadcast on local television and radio.

Nearly forty minutes passed before a second message went out: “There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. Repeat. False Alarm.” Later, the governor of Hawaii, David Ige, told CNN, “It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the changeover of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button.”……

Our apartment looks out over the international airport and Pearl Harbor. Whenever there’s fighter-jet activity, it goes right by our lanai. There’s been a lot of exercises recently. The local news has been reporting why so many fighter jets are running around, and the stories described the name of the exercises: Sunset Aloha. Apparently, they’re military drills. What it meant, for us, is F-22s and F-35s have been screaming through the skies over the past two weeks.

“We were sitting out on the lanai when the announcement came over the building speaker that there was an inbound ballistic missile to Hawaii. And that it wasn’t a drill. They repeated that. I got a text from a friend who’s an airline pilot who runs a Honolulu route and happened to be in town saying, ‘Did you guys see this?’ My wife called a friend of hers on the Big Island to see whether it was something that was just Honolulu, just Oahu, or the entire state. She was able to get through, and her friend said ‘Yes, it’s for the entire state.’

“At that point, we secured all the windows and all the doors. We started filling the tubs and every container we could with water. And texting family and friends. There’s been an increasing amount of information in Hawaii about what to do in case of a ballistic missile, over the last few months, clearly tied to tensions with North Korea. Everybody in Hawaii is very aware that after Guam we’re the next-closest target. We’re the only part of the U.S. that’s been a target of a military attack by a foreign power in the past century. And, of course, coming from New York, being the target of a non-military attack, that resonated with us in the worst possible way. Hawaii has also started doing monthly air-raid drills.

“It took me maybe a minute to process that this was actually happening. It was an ‘Oh my god, but I need to execute, I need to get things done’ kind of feeling. ‘Is this real? Can this really happen? They’re gonna shoot it down, right? What happens if our building collapses and we can’t get to our little girl?’

“After about five minutes, we were visibly upset. My wife was crying, and George, our daughter, wanted to know why. We asked her to come over for a family hug. We explained that we’d heard very bad news that something very, very bad was happening and it had us really, really upset. I don’t think she really understands nuclear Armageddon or ballistic missiles, but she certainly understands that Mommy and Daddy are really upset.

“We continued to fill every container we could find with water for maybe another fifteen or twenty minutes. We tried calling people. My wife tried her father in Chicago three times, got a busy signal. I texted my mother and my twenty-one-year-old daughter. We texted the rest of my wife’s family to say there’s a ballistic missile coming towards Hawaii and it’s not a drill.

“I’m not a religious person. There are no prayers to God in our household.

“At eight twenty-nine, we got a text back from my wife’s sister-in-law saying it was a hoax. Half an hour had passed, roughly. Then I checked and started seeing reports on Twitter from Tulsi Gabbard and other reps, from the governor, saying this was a false alarm. Then we got an alert over the building loudspeaker also saying it was a false alarm. Then we got the cell-phone alert. At that point, I was able to get through to my mother on the phone. She reported that what she saw on the news in the mainland was nothing until finally they said, ‘Oh, there’s a false alarm of a missile coming into Hawaii.’ Meanwhile, everyone over here is really upset and thinks they’re all going to die. Our friend the pilot was in a hotel saying the lobby was full of crying children.

“We began to relax a little and start to deal with the aftereffects of a severe adrenaline rush. I’m still shaking, though. My wife is still having waves of goose bumps and chills periodically….. 

From Twitter Moments, 14 January 2018:

NSW Auditor-General not impressed by government agencies cyber security risk management

“Specific financial reporting, controls and service delivery comments are included in the individual 2017 cluster financial audit reports tabled in Parliament from October to December 2017.” [NSW Auditor-General, Report on Internal Controls and Governance 2017, December 2017]

On 20 December 2017 the NSW Auditor-General released the Report on Internal Controls and Governance 2017.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 28 December 2017:

Two-thirds of NSW government agencies are failing to properly safeguard their data, increasing the risk of improper access to confidential information about members of the public and identity fraud by cyber criminals.

The finding has emerged from an audit of dozens of government agencies, including those holding highly sensitive personal information collected from millions of citizens, such as NSW Health, the department of education, NSW Police Force, Roads and Maritime Services and the justice department.

While the report by auditor-general Margaret Crawford does not name the agencies failing to properly manage privileged access to their systems, it highlights the potential consequences.

"Personal information collected by public sector agencies about members of the public is of high value to cyber criminals, as it can be used to create false identities to commit other crimes," she says in the report.

"Despite these risks, we found that one agency had 37 privileged user accounts, including 33 that were dormant. The agency had no formal process to create, modify or deactivate privileged users."

Overall, Ms Crawford's report found 68 per cent of NSW government agencies "do not adequately manage privileged access to their systems".

In addition, she said, the audit determined that 61 per cent of agencies "do not regularly monitor the account activity of privileged users".

"This places those agencies at greater risk of not detecting compromised systems, data breaches and misuse," the report said.

The audit found 31 per cent of agencies "do not limit or restrict privileged access to appropriate personnel". Of those, just one-third monitor the account activity of privileged users.

It found that almost one-third of agencies breach their own security policies on user access.

The report warns that if agencies fail to implement proper controls "they may also breach NSW laws and policies and the international standards that they reference".

Read the full article here.

List of NSW Government Agencies Examined by NSW Auditor-General

Education

Department of Education

Family and Community Services

Department of Family and Community Services

New South Wales Land and Housing Corporation

Finance, Services and Innovation

Department of Finance, Services and Innovation * Specifically identified in report

Place Management NSW

Property NSW

Service NSW

Health

NSW Health

Industry

Department of Industry

Destination NSW

Forestry Corporation of New South Wales

Office of Sport

TAFE Commission

Water NSW

Justice

Department of Justice

Fire and Rescue NSW

Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales

NSW Police Force

Office of the NSW Rural Fire Service

Planning and Environment

Department of Planning and Environment

Essential Energy

Hunter Water Corporation

Landcom

Office of Environment and Heritage

Office of Local Government

Sydney Water Corporation

Premier and Cabinet

Department of Premier and Cabinet

Transport

NSW Trains

Rail Corporation New South Wales

Roads and Maritime Services

Sydney Trains

Transport for NSW

WCX M4 PTY Limited

WCX M5 PTY Limited

Treasury

Crown Finance Entity

Insurance and Care NSW

Lifetime Care and Support Authority

NSW Treasury Corporation

NSW Self Insurance Corporation

Excerpt from Report on Internal Controls and Governance 2017:

Some deficiencies were common across agencies

The most common internal control deficiencies were poor or absent IT controls related to:

user access management

password management

privileged access management

user acceptance testing.

The most common governance deficiencies related to:

management of cyber security risks

capital project governance

management of shared service arrangements

conflicts-of-interest management

gifts-and-benefits management

risk management maturity

ethical behaviour policies and statements.