There are several pieces of recent news that should have you worried about the government’s ability to keep a gun register safe and secure.
Firstly there is the massive hack and ransom demands of the Waikato District Health Board:
Clinical services across all Waikato public hospitals have been seriously affected by a cyber security incident with all phones and computers down.
Outpatient appointments and patients coming for a non-urgent surgery have been affected.
Resident Doctors Association and Association of Professional and Executive Employees (APEX) national secretary Dr Deborah Powell says the cyberattack on the Waikato District Health Board appears to be a type of ransomware called “Conti”.
It appears to be same type of attack that targeted Ireland’s Department of Health last week.
“Some elective surgery has [been cancelled], some have still gone ahead, but some surgery has been cancelled,” Waikato DHB chief executive Kevin Snee told Checkpoint.
“We’re talking about a number of patients, but at this stage we can’t be clear exactly how many because we’re in the middle of it … it will only be clear about how many patients have been affected after the event.
“It’s a cyber security breach. It’s a virus that’s affected our system and it looks like that’s been malicious intent.”
Snee said it could “well be” a ransomware attack.
“Certainly, the indications are that it is.
“We’ve received a message – we need to check the veracity of the message – but it appears to be indicating that it is a ransomware event.
Government departments are notorious for outdated and therefore vulnerable IT systems. The Police would be no better at handling this than the DHBs.
Then there is yet another privacy breach of firearms owners’ details by Police:
Police have admitted nearly 40 firearms licence applicants have had their privacy breached.
A police spokesperson told Newshub 38 people had been impacted by the “localised” privacy breach after an email was sent advising the recipients to undertake a firearms safety course.
Newshub contacted police after being advised by a firearms licence applicant he had been copied into the same email as nearly 40 others, raising concerns about his privacy.
“Instead of blind copying everyone into the email, the firearms licensing administrator has simply added everyone’s emails in,” he said.
“This is a terrible way to send emails especially regarding the potential ownership and use of firearms.”
However, police said the breach was limited to just people’s email addresses. The spokesperson said the breach was “human error” and not usual practice.
“Police will be contacting those involved to inform them of the privacy breach and apologise for the error.”
Newshub
Perhaps we need a sensible shooters lobby group that would prosecute Police for such breaches. It appears they’ve learned nothing from previous breaches and are carrying on regardless. Perhaps a few expensive lawsuits would solve the problems?
Finally there is this from South Africa, where their gun register is in hopeless disarray:
South Africa’s Central Firearms Registry (CFR) needs to move into the twenty first century with urgency and take the entire firearms application process online.
This is the view of the DA’s Shadow Minister of Police, Andrew Whitfield who was commenting on the state of the CFR.
He said during an oversight visit by Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police to the CFR this weekend, it became clear that it is dysfunctional and cannot fulfil its mandate.
What they have seen confirmed photos posted on social media about the dire state of the CFR, which include:
– Files piled up in corridors on every floor due to a lack of space.
– The poor use of IT systems.
– Staff shortages.
– A building which has been declared unsafe.
“These are all contributing factors to the chaos we saw at the CFR. Staff morale is at an all-time low under these conditions resulting in rock bottom levels of productivity,” Whitfield said.
“During the oversight I challenged the SAPS to take the entire process online from application to approval.”
“This would remove unnecessary delays and ensure a fully digitised system which applicants could access to monitor the progress of their application.”
It was revealed by SAPS that amnesty applications are placed on top of one another on the floor as they arrive.
This results in amnesty applications submitted at the beginning of an amnesty sitting at the bottom of thousands of pieces of paper.
“Therefore, if you were one of the first amnesty applicants, your application is likely to be one of the last to be processed,” he said.
In February 2021, SAPS presented to the Portfolio Committee that only 4%, or 2,059, of the 50,962 applications received during the 2019/20 amnesty had been finalised.
For applications received during the 2020/21 amnesty just 0.92%, or 280, of the 30,356 had been finalised.
“Thousands of South Africans waiting for their firearm licences are left vulnerable by the failures of the CFR. This is unacceptable,” Whitfield said.
Anyone who believes that the New Zealand implementation of a gun register won’t be an expensive boondoggle that will achieve nothing, is either the Police Commissioner or congenitally stupid.
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD
