KEY POINTS:
A person has apologised for hacking an nzherald.co.nz poll on the state of freedom and free speech in New Zealand, wildly changing the result.
The result of the poll - asking "Is NZ becoming a less free and democratic country?" - was running at about 80 per cent "yes".
But at 3pm, it switched and a massive majority now said "no".
The poll was pulled and nzherald.co.nz's technical team has established that a single hacker managed to vote more than 5000 times in a period of about 10 minutes.
The poll was prompted by the Herald's campaign to have the Electoral Finance Bill, which opponents argue will limit freedom of speech, scrapped.
A person identifying themselves as an Auckland teen who is interested in politics contacted the Herald by email and phone this afternoon. He admitted that he had changed the results and apologised for distorting debate.
The Herald was able to confirm details to ascertain he was the hacker.
In an email he wrote: "I am a teen who is deeply involved in politics and I was quite angry that the Herald yesterday had bagged the PM.
"I tried to change the vote, thinking the poll as being merely a 'fun guide' to opinion. I was wrong and feel completely embarassed by my mistake."
He also said: "I see that it is not funny, as I thought it was yesterday."
The hacker was using a dynamic xtra IP address - 222.152.66.116. (The "reverse lookup" is 222-152-66-116.jetstream.xtra.co.nz.)
Security measures are now being taken to prevent a repeat.
The corrected poll - giving the hacker one vote as a nod to democracy - reads like this: 3259 votes cast in total, 81 percent of people (2626 votes)said yes, NZ is becoming less free and democratic but 19 percent (633 votes) disagreed.
We have given the hacker one No vote.
Tim Lockie, general manager for technology at nzherald.co.nz's owners APN Online, said today: "We"re currently upgrading the NZ Herald Online publishing system to prevent the online poll from being manipulated.
"In the future, the system will block computer programs which automatically submit thousands of false 'votes' to the poll."
Discussion of the Herald's election bill campaign on the blogosphere:
The Electoral Finance Bill and the Herald's opposition to it has split the blogosphere.
The Herald's Your Views section is running hot on the discussion. Read it here.
The Standard, a blog for the New Zealand labour movement, is running various posts.
On the Herald's front page newspaper editorial criticising the bill, it says: "It looks like the Herald tried its best to break National's anti-EFB campaign out of the beltway and into the public arena, but they stuffed it by making their bias too blatant."
The No Right Turn blog concentrates on the bill itself. "So, the Herald thinks that the government's Electoral Finance Bill (due back from committee any day now) is an attack on democracy. I disagree. The real "attack on democracy" comes not from the bill, but from an existing regime which allows rich parties with rich mates to ignore disclosure requirements and circumvent spending limits - effectively allowing them to sell policy and buy power."
Kiwiblog's David Farrar comes out for the Herald stance.
"Well done to the NZ Herald for making it front page. These bills do matter, they do fundamentally skew our democratic framework. They are the sort of laws, which if passed overseas, we would condemn."
The Herald's main competitors, Fairfax-owned newspapers and websites, carry differing views.
A Dominion-Post editorial opposes the intent of the Electoral Finance Bill, calling it "outrageous".
The paper says: "Though Miss Clark intimated recently that the Electoral Finance Bill would be redrafted, its provisions on third-party funding seem likely to remain. That means that trade unions, the Exclusive Brethren and charities seeking, for example, higher payments to the disabled will find their freedom of speech stifled from January 1 till the morning after election day.
"It is incredible that any social democrat party would countenance such a move but when a party faces possible defeat, it can elevate ambition over ethics. Miss Clark seems to be calculating that the public interest in election spending is over - that, while voters got seriously angry in 2006, this latest row will be an overnight wonder.
National needs to ensure she is wrong."
But curiously a political blogger on Fairfax's stuff.co.nz, Colin Espiner, claims the opposition to the bill is overstated: "From the hue and cry over this legislation you'd think Labour was trying to introduce the black plague."
