Exclusive: council has retrieved logs that could reveal more about who downloaded document now the subject of a police investigation

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

The City of Sydney has retrieved logs of visits to its website which could reveal more about who downloaded a document that was altered by persons unknown before being used by Angus Taylor to attack Clover Moore, a matter now under police investigation.

The detective sergeant in charge of Strike Force Garrad has already visited the council offices and been given copies of correspondence between the energy minister and the lord mayor, a timeline, and the metadata on when the document in question – the council’s annual report – was last altered.

In September Taylor accused the lord mayor of spending more than $15m on travel in a letter and story in the Daily Telegraph. The minister’s office provided a copy of the council’s annual report to the Telegraph as proof – which stated the council spent “$14.2” in expenses on interstate travel and “$1.7” on overseas visits.

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The council’s actual annual report shows expenditure of $4,206.32 on interstate travel and $1,727.77 on overseas visits.

Taylor has said he accessed the document from the council’s website, and that he had evidence multiple versions of the annual report existed at various points since they were uploaded, an explanation rejected by the council.

Guardian Australia can reveal the council has also already retrieved data logs, which would reveal details of what was downloaded and the IP addresses of the devices that downloaded pages, including details of who downloaded the 2017-18 annual report, following a freedom of information request from Guardian Australia two weeks ago.

So far Guardian Australia has been told that the information would need to be sorted to extract downloads of the annual report at the centre of the controversy and may raise privacy issues. Discussions on how the information might be released are continuing.

However, the New South Wales police would be able to access the logs including more detail about an IP address beyond the general geographical location of the machine and the identity of the internet service provider that services that machine.

Significantly, the logs cover 9 September, the day Taylor said the annual report was downloaded from the council’s website.

The council also provided Guardian Australia with some Google Analytics about the number of downloads of the 2017-18 annual report during September.

The City of Sydney has two different formats of its annual reports to be downloaded – a Word version and a PDF.

The Google analytics for the month of September show there were 23 downloads of the Word version but none on 9 September.

The PDF was downloaded 174 times during the month but only 10 times on 9 September.

There were two downloads from IP addresses in Canberra during September. Over 67% of the downloads were in Sydney and were probably City of Sydney staff checking on information derived from the annual report.

Google Analytics do not track every download as it is possible to avoid recording a visit to the annual report by cutting and pasting the URL for the annual report into a browser.

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However, it indicates that there could be valuable information to be gleaned from the logs.

The police investigation comes in response to a request from the Labor shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus.

He has suggested that Taylor’s reliance on the altered document, made by an unknown person, raises possible offences under section 253 and section 254 of the NSW Crimes Act.

These make it an offence for a person to make a false document with the intention of using it to inducing a person ( in this case the journalist from the Daily Telegraph) to influence a person in public office in the exercise of their duties.

Inducing a person to accept the document as genuine is also an offence.

Labor has also suggested there may be an offence under section 316 if Taylor or his office covered up the use of a false document.

The lord mayor has not sought a police investigation. A spokesman said she was more concerned to set the record straight on the council’s spending on travel and get on with the business of the city.