The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) was involved in two different cryptocurrency related incidents in February. The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee heard the case on Monday afternoon and concluded that the two events were completely unrelated to each other. The CEO and Director of Meteorology Dr Andrew Johnson confirmed the news. He also stated that the bureau has suspended a third-party for serving up ‘fake news’ advertising on its website.
ABC reported that two different advertisement on the website, took the users to a fake CNN news story about a bitcoin startup run by celebrated entrepreneur Elon Musk. The content further asked the readers to click on a website that is connected to a fraud website. As one of the third-party advertisers have been suspended, Johnson said that there is only one party providing ad revenue to the government.
He said, “Our whole advertising policy is underpinned by quite a significant and detailed set of interventions.” Answering a question about the procedures, he said, “We have a four-stage review process, some of that’s automated, some of that involves human beings actually undertaking manual checks — that process is still in play — and further, a very large majority of activity on the bureau has stood the test of time.”
He added, “We actually suspended them — that’s the way you control that — we had doubts as to our legitimate concerns about to their capacity to block activity that’s contrary to the bureau’s policy, so the action we took was to suspend them.”
The Bureau makes AU$4 million on an average from advertising revenue. The website costs $750,000 to run the website and received about AU$2.3 million in revenue in 2018. However, this fund doesn’t remain with the BOM. Instead, it goes to the Department of Finance.
The second incident that the BOM was involved in happened when the Australian Federal Police (AFP) alleged that two BOM staff members were using the bureau’s equipment to mine cryptocurrencies. These two employees were being investigated for using the ‘powerful computers’ at the agency to carry out these illegal activities. The AFP also suggested that it had executed a search warrant at the Docklands, Melbourne in late February.
Johnson commented that this investigation is also ongoing, saying, “I’m really not in a position to discuss it any further — it’s really a matter for the AFP.” He also denied any links between the two incidents and said, “There is no connection whatsoever between the two. The investigation that you referred to at the beginning of your question had been underway for some considerable time and the decision to activate it and reach its denouement in the public domain was a decision made by the AFP independent of the bureau.”
He also suggested that the matter is entirely in the hands of the AFP and they will proceed to prosecute the staffers or do whatever they deem fit. Now, it is up to the AFP to find out a reasonable solution and address a sentence for the two.
