Seized hard drive tied to gas-plant scandal

Password to device found in Ottawa office alerts IT expert

An Ontario government IT expert testifying before a legislative committee probing the gas-plants scandal said he “believes’’ a computer hard drive seized last August from an office building in Ottawa was accessed by a password related to the scandal. The committee’s focus had been, up to now, on the 24 hard drives in the premier’s office in the legislature. Ontario Provincial Police claim Dalton McGuinty’s former chief of staff, David Livingston obtained a special password enabling the holder to wipe computers and passed it to Peter Faist, a computer expert. But that scope appeared to expand Thursday after Shawn Truax, a forensic co-ordinator with the government’s cyber security branch, said his staff seized five computers from an Ottawa office on Aug. 14, 2013. The office, the committee heard, is a ministerial regional office “typically used for the premier’s day-to-day operations,” according to committee member Lisa Thompson, a Progressive Conservative MPP.

Truax said he “believes” a global password was used on one of the Ottawa computers and promised to confirm that and get back to the committee. He also could not confirm who the computer was used by, but promised to check and reply to the committee on that point, too.

The committee was told that the office was used by former McGuinty constituency assistant and current Ottawa South MPP, John Fraser.

But after the meeting recessed, the office of Government Services Minister John Milloy quickly put out a statement saying that Fraser’s computer isn’t one of the 24 that police investigators say was accessed by the password. And the government said no one assigned to the Ottawa office is named in the list of the 24 harddrive users.

Police have seized the government hard drives in Toronto in their investigation of the possible deletion of documents related to the cancellation of two gas plants, cancellations that could cost taxpayers as much as $1.1 billion.

None of the allegations has been tested in court and a lawyer for Livingston, who is being investigated for possible breach of trust, has denied that his client did anything wrong.