Hacked, you say? Hmm, sounds plausible
SO a crack team is hacking into politicians’ Twitter accounts and liking single embarrassing tweets before fading into the night? Um, sure, writes Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson.
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THE DOG ate my homework.
I must have missed your email.
I almost bought Bitcoin before it was cool.
Add to these a fresh excuse: “A hacker made me call the Prime Minister a cranky prick.”
It pairs well with another addition — “A hacker made me like porn even though I was definitely, probably asleep at the time” — and makes our country ground zero for a very specific, totally awkward crime wave.
These diabolic hackers are using their vast technical skills not to invade our national security systems, steal and sell information, or even change our politicians’ profile pictures to poo emoji.
No, these cybercrime masterminds are liking things on politicians’ Twitter accounts that make the rest of us weep and shake with laughter. The fiends.
But before you question the very future of our nation, now held hostage by villainy rarely seen outside episodes of Get Smart, be comforted by the notion that our representatives are taking this outbreak more seriously than anyone demanded.
The full resources of the Australian Federal Police are now invested in bringing “The Like Bandits” to justice so their licence to internet may be rescinded. (Or we could just punish them with obnoxiously slow copper NBN?)
The latest crime wave crashed on to Joe Hockey’s Twitter feed overnight, when our honourable Ambassador to the United States liked a tweet calling his boss, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, “a cranky prick” just like “everyone who has worked with him says he is”.
When alerted that everyone could see his apparent approval, Hockey immediately notified the police.
Don’t get too excited. It looks like I have been hacked.AFP now investigating.
— Joe Hockey (@JoeHockey) December 11, 2017
This issue had nothing to do with that time Turnbull publicly mauled his idea to let first-home buyers use superannuation for deposits, or that other time Turnbull stood against him for the Liberal leadership.
And Hockey’s surprise internet “hack” is just the latest in a definitely not hilarious series of “attacks” against our elected officials on Twitter.
Health Minister Greg Hunt’s account liked the adult musings of a pornographic account on Twitter over the weekend, and fellow Liberal member and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne appeared to favour a tweet featuring a gay porn film that even its makers couldn’t pass off as art house.
This follows instances of Treasurer Scott Morrison’s account liking a human rights tweet in 2016, and suspended Australian Border Force commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg adding to his scandals by appearing to approve a supremely intimate Twitter video.
The most recent social media “hacks” have now been referred to police who are undoubtedly investigating the Russians, the Chinese, or a crack group of underemployed comedians.
There are, of course, alternative explanations to this reign of tweet terror.
Some public and political figures allow spokespeople to tweet for them, be they lawyers, ministerial staff, or interns.
Just last week US president Donald Trump blamed his personal lawyer, John Dowd, for drafting a tweet suggesting he knew his national security adviser had lied to the FBI when he fired him. Awkward.
It’s also far too easy to tweet from the wrong account and instantly regret your life choices. Programs like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite give Twitter users access to multiple accounts and, if you’re distracted on a lunch break, or drunk on a night out, it’s easy to make your employer look edgy.
The American Red Cross, for example, once erroneously announced it was getting “slizzerd” on beer, McDonald’s called Trump a “disgusting excuse for a president” with “tiny hands,” and the Indy Car Series labelled his son a “liability to the Russians”.
There was no grand conspiracy behind these tweets, just booze or a grudge.
And, to offer an additional alternative theory, however unlikely, the politicians may just have liked these tweets accidentally.
Who hasn’t been staring at Twitter, bleary eyed, locked in an infinite scroll towards enlightenment, when you’ve tapped the wrong button? It could have happened to any one of us… who happened to be on a feed populated by adult videos and discussion of political predispositions.
These explanations are too straightforward and obviously what the reprobates want us to think, however. Australia won’t be fooled. We’ll dedicate as many intelligence analysts as we can to vitally important investigation.
After all, you wouldn’t want to make Malcolm Turnbull crankier.
Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson is New Corp’s national technology editor.
Originally published as Hacked, you say? Hmm, sounds plausible