The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports deliberate and “malicious” attacks from offshore, designed to sabotage nation’s first online 2016 Census. “Clarification on whether the government is backtracking from its initial diagnosis of a DDoS—which is an attack—has been sought by Guardian Australia from the ABS [Australian Bureau of Statistics], but the explanation has been the subject of some scepticism,” writes Elle Hunt in the Guardian.

— Alastair MacGibbon, the prime minister’s special adviser on cybersecurity, said it was the sort of assault typically used against government systems. ‘A denial of service is not a breach. It’s not designed to take data,’ he said. ‘A denial of service is designed to frustrate.’ Aug 10 / New York Times

— “Census Fail… and the dangers of estimating traffic,” Danny Bishop, a Melbourne-based digital media strategist writes: “Of course the technology failed. There’s no doubting that Ultimately that’s the cause of everything. But someone, somewhere doomed it all to fail when they estimated the traffic. In the week leading up to Census night, spokespeople for the ABS stated that they had tested the site to 1,000,000 form submissions per hour - twice the load they expected. So what that tells us is that the ABS actually expected 500,000 form submissions per hour, and tested to 200% of that figure. How did the ABS come up with that figure?”

— “I Didn’t Put My Name on the Census,” Paul Budde today in CircleID: “Our leaders seem to be totally oblivious to the concerns many citizens have, and they have failed to properly address these concerns… In order to stand up for privacy, democracy and liberty I defied the law and did not put my name on the Census, simply in order to send out a message that I don’t like the fact that people within the ABS and the government do not seem to take our concerns seriously.”