‘I AM NOT A HACKER’
Independent MLA reveals she was the source of revelations about a privacy breach on the B.C. Liberal Party website
I’m going to do something right now that I don’t think I’ve ever done in my whole career as a newspaper reporter and columnist: Reveal my source — a source to whom I had promised anonymity.
The source is Vicki Huntington, the Independent MLA for Delta South.
Huntington and her staff were the sources for my original story about a privacy breach on the B.C. Liberal Party website.
It’s a story that has now blown up into something much bigger after Premier Christy Clark accused the NDP of trying to criminally hack into the Liberal website.
Clark’s comments infuriated Huntington, who has now relieved me of the promise of anonymity I made to her and her staff.
“When I heard the premier’s comments, accusing the NDP of criminal activity and saying this ‘hacking’ of their website was subverting democracy — I couldn’t take it anymore,” Huntington told me.
“I said, ‘Enough is enough. We have to go public on this now.’” Here’s what happened: Last week, a member of Huntington’s staff told me they stumbled across the private information of B.C. citizens publicly displayed on the B.C. Liberal website.
Huntington wanted to alert me to this apparent breach of B.C.’s privacy laws and directed me to the “uploads” section of the Liberal website at this address: www.bcliberals.com /wp-content/uploads/.
When I clicked on that link, I found exactly what Huntington described: A spreadsheet showing the private email addresses of about 100 Vancouver Island residents who responded to a Liberal party survey. Their survey responses and home postal codes were also on the spreadsheet, which was entitled “generated leads.”
There was no requirement to type in a username or password to view the document.
“It was publicly available for anyone in the world to look at,” Huntington said.
“I felt very strongly that this was a breach of B.C.’s privacy laws, so we decided to contact a journalist we trust.”
Soon after I started asking questions about this privacy breach, the Liberal party disabled the link. When you click on it now, you get a message that says, “Forbidden.”
The Liberals also sent out an email to the 100 people impacted, apologizing for the breach of their privacy.
That’s where I thought the story would end until it took a dramatic twist. The Liberals said the private information became available because their website had been “hacked” by unnamed “opponents.”
Then Clark accused the NDP of attempting to illegally hack the Liberal website.
Computer hacking is a criminal offence in Canada punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Clark said the Liberals traced a hacking attempt to a computer somewhere in the B.C. legislature.
“We know that someone with very strong technical knowledge, someone with malicious intent, hacked the B.C. Liberal website,” Clark told CHNL Radio Thursday.
“We know that it came from the legislature. I guess people can draw their own conclusions about who in the B.C. legislature might want to hack the B.C. Liberal website.” Huntington was furious. “I’m not a hacker,” she said. “To me, this is an attempt by Christy Clark to obscure the real issue: Why was private information available on the public Liberal Party website?”
Clark said Thursday she may have rushed to judgment in accusing the NDP of hacking the website, but she continued to suggest the New Democrats may have been involved.
“I think we should all be concerned that somebody is trying to subvert our democratic process,” Clark said.
Huntington fired back : “It’s outrageous she would accuse other people at the legislature when her own government was caught triple-deleting emails and other scandals.”
Huntington doesn’t know why the Liberals claim evidence of “hacking” from the legislature when all she and her staff did was look at information openly available on the Liberal website.
“That’s not ‘hacking’ in my mind,” Huntington said.
“I want to be extremely clear on this. At no time did anyone in my office view any piece of information that had been protected by a username, password, encryption or any other security measure.”
Clark, meanwhile, refused NDP Leader John Horgan’s request for a retraction and apology.
“If his feelings are hurt, I have to say I’m a little bit surprised,” Clark said, adding there will be an investigation into the hacking attempt.
The province’s independent Information and Privacy Commissioner said Thursday he has launched an investigation.
In the meantime, Huntington hopes her disclosures will now calm things down.
“It’s time to get back to the real issues,” she said.
I agree with her. I congratulate Huntington for blowing the whistle on the Liberal website privacy breach and I applaud her courage for speaking out and defending the truth.