Aardvark Daily

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Heaven protect us from dullards

2 July 2008

If you were sending sensitive information by email and thought there was a chance that someone could be intercepting those emails or even hacking into your servers and accessing the raw mail files, what would you do?

Well that's the problem currently being faced by the National Party after Nicky Hager reported information that, party officials believe could only have been gleaned from emails sent back and forth through parliament's computers.

Oh dear, what can they do?

What should they have done before now?

Well it seems they're powerless to work out whether their systems have been hacked from outside or from within.

Maybe a better firewall?

Perhaps some better virus-scanning software?

Well they're all good ideas but the most obvious solution seems to have totally escaped them and leaves me wondering how on earth these people will run a country when they can't even keep their email safe.

Have they not heard of "encryption"?

It's a really clever concept where instead of sending and storing your email in a human-readable form, you run it through a thing called "encryption software" so that it becomes an incomprehensible mass of gibberish -- to anyone without the right decryption key that is.

Yes, I deliberately wrote that in a very patronising way because it would seem that the Nats simply don't really have a clue about computers and the security that surrounds even the simplest thing like email.

If the Nats took to using encryption for all but the most trivial correspondence then no matter how screwed up the parliamentary computer systems were, nothing short of key-logging or trojan software would provide hackers with access to that information.

And these are the people who will no doubt press on with plans to further reduce the privacy and rights of the individual in the name of efficiency and protecting us against ourselves.

They'll tell us not to worry that they are accumulating huge amounts of data about our every day lives, our movements, our habits and our activities. Oh no -- only those with something to hide will have anything to fear...

Unless something goes wrong and that data falls into the wrong hands that is.

But that could never happen of course -- the party who can't even protect its own email from hackers will tell us.

I'm sorry but this is just bloody stupid.

Surely there are some good consultants around Wellington that the Nats can use to learn about this stuff.

Or is it that they can't remember something as complicated as a decryption key?

Would we soon find that key hand-written on a post-it note stuck to every National MP's LCD screen?

Come on girls -- smarten up your act. You're looking really old and really incapable of coping with the challenges of the 21st century here.

Now tell us that under your leadership, we'll turn NZ into a vibrant knowledge-based economy.

Hang on, I've just got to take a phone call...

... "hi John, what's the problem...."

..."how do you get twink off your LCD screen?"

"geez man, you're the leader of the opposition...."

Am I being too harsh here?

Or should those who aspire to lead the country be at least understand the importance of setting up a secure email system that includes encryption?

Perhaps the reality in this case is that National have a spy within their ranks and they simply see an opportunity to blame an email "hacker" for what is really nothing more than a personel problem?

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