Last night August 9th Australia was required to fill out the Census.
The controversy had been all over the media; that this was the first time we would be required to do the whole thing online. That they would be keeping our personal details such as name and address for more than double the usual amount of time - 4 years instead of 18 months. A few high profile people came out saying they would not be filling in their name for privacy reasons to which the ABS hit back that we could be fined up to $180 per day that this was not completed. I even heard someone say "$180 per day!? These crazy new laws!" I would like here to note that this applicable fine is under a 1902 law. Not quite new, but good try.
I, like many Australians last night found myself unable to fill out my census as the site was down! In actual fact it said "Thank you for participating in the Census. The system is very busy at the moment. Please wait for 15 minutes before trying again. Your patience and cooperation are appreciated. [code 9]"
After all that!? Were they serious!? Websites selling music festival tickets crash due to the large number of people accessing it all at once...surely, surely the boffins at the ABS are aware of this potential and had systems in place to handle the traffic!? Sigh. Well, it turns out they did...they had indeed thought of that. and the site would have been fine.
Except.
It was attacked. Over and over again. The hits were apparently from overseas denial of service attacks. with even more following on today.
After all this rhetoric leading up to yesterday's (attempted) census and how safe our data will be this is just an embarrassment!