Federal Election smear campaign against Kerryn Phelps tracked to middle of river in Amsterdam

Updated

One email came from "Alexis Barnes", others were sent by "Mack Harrington" and "Riley Britt".

They aren't real people, but the aliases are a cheap and easy email hack employed by the masterminds of the racist campaign against Wentworth MP Dr Kerryn Phelps.

The metadata attached to one of the emails reveals it was sent from the Netherlands, and places the coordinates directly in the middle of a river in Amsterdam.

That soggy headquarters is an absurdity — the sender almost certainly used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to obscure their digital footprint, something becoming increasingly cheaper and easier.

A VPN in real-world terms would be the equivalent of listing a PO box instead of your home address in Australia — except, if you wanted to, you could use a PO box in Morocco or Estonia.

The emails have been referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP), and while the campaign against Dr Phelps might appear sophisticated and organised, a closer look at it suggests the opposite.

Key points: Little effort appeared to be made to obscure the sender's identity because little effort was required

Dr Phelps has written to the AFP and said she was "frustrated" by the lack of progress on the investigation

Some of those who received the smear material had their emails made public in data breaches



Emails sent to an unknown number of electors contained incorrect voting information and several anti-Semitic remarks.

They falsely claimed Dr Phelps was ineligible to stand at the May 18 federal election because she is an Israeli citizen.

Later in the day, the independent MP sent a letter the AFP, urging them to reopen the investigation into the smear campaign against her, which she claims stopped after the Wentworth by-election last year.

"I remain frustrated that the investigation appears to have stalled and politely request that the AFP step up its efforts with election day fast approaching," she wrote.

The ABC understands in addition to the offensive email circulating yesterday, at least two more were sent in April.

Little effort appeared to be made to obscure the sender's identity because little effort was required.

Tracing the culprit

Each message was addressed to the owner of the email personally and was signed by a different person each time.

This suggests they were distributed using a simple mail-out protocol — something straightforward to do in widely available servers like Outlook or Gmail.

Questions also remain about how voters were targeted in the first place.

Recipients were geographically spread out, with residents in Sydney's eastern suburbs and Melbourne receiving emails.

Some of those who received the smear material had previously had their emails made public in data breaches.

A data breach is when hackers infiltrate supposedly secure online information stores — held by any organisation that has a base of clients — and steal large quantities of personal information.

Other recipient emails were uncompromised, adding to the confusion as to where the culprits sourced their list if not a public database.

Dr Phelps' main opponent in Wentworth, Liberal candidate Dave Sharma, also referred the emails to the AFP.

The hidden campaign: How are you being targeted this election?

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Please note your information will be handled in accordance with this This federal election, the ABC is digging into how political messages are being crafted to influence your votes.We're collecting texts, emails, robocalls, social media posts, memes, pamphlets, billboards, letters or even posters and graffiti you have spotted in your neighbourhood.Please submit any material you've spotted in the form below.Please note your information will be handled in accordance with this privacy statement

Topics: federal-election, government-and-politics, federal-elections, elections, federal-government, discrimination, information-technology, computers-and-technology, internet-technology, edgecliff-2027, nsw, sydney-2000

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