By a rough idea, it has been estimated that there were about 16 million people who were expected to fill their online forms through the website electronically when the server crashed.
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“I want to assure Australians that the unequivocal advice we have received.is that their Australian census data is safe, it has not been compromised”, Turnbull told reporters. Nor was it a hack’.
Member for Riverina Michael McCormack posted to social media this morning that the 2016 online Census form was subject to four Denial of Service attacks yesterday of varying nature and severity.
After hours of downtime, the ABS admitted Tuesday it had finally given up for the day, shutting down its website “to ensure the integrity of the data“.
“It was an attempt to frustrate the collection of data”, he said.
But Dr Leigh criticised the coalition for leaving the position of chief statistician vacant for a year and feared it would now blame the bureaucrats.
But Mr Kalisch wanted to remind Australians that they have plenty of time to complete the Census, to well into September.
As authorities scrambled to provide a cohesive explanation for why the census was not completed for the first time in its 105-year history, some politicians and privacy advocates said the incident vindicated their security concerns.
Of course, that begs the question – why was the ABS still tweeting up until 9pm and later that “Tonight’s Census night”.
Operational costs will run as high as $272 million, or $11 per Australian.
Despite numerous attempts to contact the ABS for further information on Wednesday night, AAP did not receive a response.
It’s understood the total budget for the survey is $470 million.
At least one Labor MP has called on the minister responsible for the census to resign after the website was unavailable on Tuesday evening due to a denial of service attack.
“It was an attack”, Kalisch told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The statistics bureau reassured Australians that their data was secure, with Kalisch saying the shutdown “actually confirms the strong position that the ABS has taken in terms of security”. It was awful. It prompted the hashtag #Censusfail, and that sums up the national sentiment toward the August 9 auto crash of data collection.
Both Australia’s Signals Directorate, an intelligence agency, and the government-appointed privacy commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, are investigating the crash.
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“If we don’t get an accurate snapshot on census night, we can’t allocate resources properly”, he said, citing closing the gap on indigenous disadvantaged and education funding as two areas that could be affected.
