Christy Clark apologizes for hacking allegations

Premier Christy Clark says she has apologized to opposition leader John Horgan for accusing the NDP of criminally hacking the B.C. Liberal Party website.

"Earlier today I called the leader of the opposition and I apologized to John for comments I made earlier this week," the premier said on a media conference call.

Clark said she hadn't spoken directly to Horgan but did leave him a voice mail.

Clark leveled the hacking allegation earlier in the week after a sensitive B.C. Liberal Party document was sent to a journalist. No evidence was ever presented by the premier or the Liberals to support the claim.

On Friday, Independent MLA Vicki Huntington divulged it was one of her staff members who had stumbled upon the document by merely clicking on a link in the donor's section of the B.C. Liberal Party's public website.

The page in question contained names, emails, addresses and the responses of a number of Vancouver Island residents who had answered a B.C. Liberal Party survey.

Huntington said she decided to go public because of Clark's "outrageous" accusations of hacking.

"Falsely accusing someone of thwarting the democratic process it's too much," said Huntington.

'Diva of deflection'

"Christy Clark is a diva of deflection. What this [hacking] story is allowing her to do is stop the public discussion of Alex Gervais a young man in government care committing suicide. Now that whole report has been deflected.

"The issue of her own party having private information on a publicly accessible website deflected."

Huntington said the Liberal Party only has itself to blame for the private document being made public.

"No username, password, or encryption device was required to access that information, which was on a spreadsheet," said Huntington."I madethe decision to alert a journalist, as [data security] questionsare in the public interest and deserve broaderscrutiny."

The B.C. Liberal Party put out a statement in response to Huntington's revelations.

"We appreciate Ms. Huntington coming forward," it read in part."Through our review, we have determined that the platform data is the only data that did not meet our full security standard, which we regret."

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