14 DAY TRIAL // The exclusive story about a New South Wales government's secret transport blueprint resulted in hacking accusations directed at journalists from the Sydney Morning Herald. The accused defended themselves by pointing out that the information was publicly accessible on an unprotected government website.
During the past weekend, Sydney Morning Herald broke a story about a transport blueprint for New South Wales. The journalists who worked on the article cited "secret government documents," that were later confirmed as being a work in progress by the Premier's Chief of Staff.
Spoiling the government's objective to officially announce the transport plan clearly did not fall well with Transport Minister Dave Campbell. The official thinks that what the newspaper did was similar to "pick the lock off a secure office and take highly confidential documents."
In response, the newspaper claims that all documents were publicly available on an unprotected website called nswtransportblueprint.com.au, which was registered to a company called Bang The Table. But instead of admitting their screw-up, the contractor treated the incident as an attack, reporting it to the police and claiming that 3,727 hits from four different IP addresses were logged on its firewall.
"We got a tip on Friday that you could read the government's transport plan by accessing a website called, unsurprisingly, nswtransportblueprint.com.au. [...] No password was requested or offered. Instead we were confronted with a dream menu for any reporter: rail services, cycleways, walking and cycling, bus services, paying and road network. With the mouse and the control P (print) command, we had our story," Matthew Moore, one of the two journalists who covered the news, explained.
"Matthew Moore and Andrew West, who wrote the transport articles may well be hacks but they are not hackers," commented Peter Fray, the Sydney Morning Herald's editor. "The real issue here is that the government's spin machine did not control the release of the information. […] It is sad, though not surprising that the minister has chosen to attack the messenger," he concluded.