Lord Mayor reinvented as US fighter pilot on X, claims account was hacked
By Felicity Caldwell and William Davis
A social media account for Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner was apparently hacked and bizarrely renamed after a highly decorated American fighter pilot.
This week, the official X (formerly Twitter) account’s name was changed to John R. Alison, with the handle @thanksdaddyfor2.
Alison is often cited as the father of Air Force Special Operations in the US.
Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner in his days in the air force, and decorated US fighter pilot John R. Alison.
The bio section has been switched to “Keeping not moving”, in what seemed to be a cheeky jab at Schrinner’s often-used slogan, “Keeping Brisbane moving”.
Posts previously made by the Lord Mayor’s official team remained unscathed, with the last post made on Monday night. As of Thursday, the account had not added any new posts or replies.
The account was still following 2300 people, with 7400 followers.
No existing posts from the account have been deleted, with nothing new posted.Credit: X
After questions from this masthead, Schrinner said his official X account of 16 years was hacked.
“But that hasn’t raised any suspicions at X,” he said.
“We’ve been trying to get the account restored but the folks at X have rejected our request, which is weird.
“If anyone has Elon Musk’s mobile number, I’d love a quick chat ideally before his trip to Mars.”
However, on Thursday night, the account’s name had changed to “Adrian Schrinner”, with the handle @bne_lordmayor, and no profile photo.
The person responsible for hacking the account did not respond to questions sent by this masthead via X.
Before his career in politics, Schrinner was in the Royal Australian Air Force from 1995 to 1997, including in an intelligence role.
Schrinner is not the only Australian politician to have their accounts hacked recently.
Last week, Clive Palmer’s political party was hacked in an attack the organisation fears has led to the theft of its emails, documents and electronic records.
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