MITA finds no hacking of .gov.mt email accounts

The ministry for information, transport and communications has asked the Opposition leader to publish the allegations concerning the Malta IT Agency (MITA) which he said he had discussed with the former RTK journalist, whose email correspondence with Joseph Muscat was leaked to the Nationalist media.

In a statement, Minister Austin Gatt said he took such allegations, made in parliament on Wednesday evening by Joseph Muscat, very seriously. “We ask Muscat to collaborate in the investigations. The ministry is determined to take all steps necessarily to ensure a high level of security in MITA’s information technology governance.”

On its part, the ministry said MITA categorically excluded that the Opposition leader’s .gov.mt domain address had been hacked.

Muscat has asked the Speaker to investigate the leak of private correspondence between him and a journalist employed with Church radio RTK, claiming the Nationalist media are in possession of a long-term exchange of emails.

Muscat said this was an illegal act of hacking and theft of information. “I am asking you to investigate the actions of the Prime Minister’s party, and the decimation of democracy and liberty in our country,” Muscat said. “There is a parallel secret service investigating the media in a bid to blackmail them. Nobody is going to scare us or stop us from doing our job."

It is unclear whether the email conversation, between Agius’s private gmail account and Muscat’s private account were lifted directly from a personal computer or hacked in externally.