The IT Ministry said this evening that a call by the Leader of the Opposition for an inquiry into alleged extraction of information from MITTS computers showed a lack of confidence in the ongoing police investigation.
The ministry noted that the Leader of the Opposition had previously called for a Magisterial inquiry into the case but was now calling for an inquiry.
The government was not against an inquiry, but it respected the autonomy of the police to investigate every case and arraigned people, if required.
The government would therefore await the outcome of the police investigations before deciding whether an inquiry should be held in terms of the Inquiries Act.
The government was not ready to hold an inquiry into security matters which of their very nature, were confidential, just to satisfy the Opposition leader. It was for this reason that the ministry had offered a presentation on security measures to the Leader of the Opposition, an offer which appeared to have been turned down.
The Opposition earlier today said that the extraction of information on 20,000 people from the government computer system at MITTS justified an inquiry.
In a joint statement, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat and the spokesman for Information technology, Chris Cardona, said this was a very serious case which raised justified public concern over the security of current systems.
The fact that the extracted information included data belonging to MPs, judges and other persons in sensitive posts and these people were not advised about what had happened, made the situation worse.
The IT minister was now limiting himself to saying that it did not result that there had been unauthorised access to emails. But this was the same minister who had previously so been sure that no information was stolen, that he had described a newspaper’s report as ‘a pack of lies’.
Dr Muscat and Dr Cardona said they were concerned that the data had been extracted by an amateur using software which could be downloaded from the internet for free. Once an amateur could do so much with this software, would could only imagine what a professional could have done using more sophisticated tools.
While the minister had offered to hold a presentation to the leader of the opposition on shortcomings found in the MITTS systems, what was especially needed now was a serious inquiry about this case and similar cases which may have taken place before, Dr Muscat and Dr Cardona said.