Te Whatu Ora data leak: The clues in Barry Young’s online footprint linking him to Covid conspiracies

Hours after Barry Young stood in the dock at Wellington District Court facing charges of allegedly leaking computer files, he was centre stage of the conspiracy theory circus.

Speaking to prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for close to an hour, Young was touted as a “whistleblower” and outlined what he had done and why.

He has been accused of leaking data from the country’s National Vaccination Database to spread misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine.

Up until that point, the 56-year-old Te Whatu Ora IT worker’s online presence had been relatively muted.

His LinkedIn profile – one of the few pieces that make up Young’s digital footprint – outlines decades of experience in the field, stretching all the way back to the 1990s in the United Kingdom, where he also studied for both his undergraduate and masters in computer science.

According to that, he’s worked at the Ministry of Health on and off since 2008, most recently in a five-year stint, where as part of a small team, he helped maintain and migrate databases.

At BNZ he did similar work for more than a decade – though a representative from the bank said Young was no longer employed with them, and they took the security of customer information seriously.

Scattered among posts about financial markets and computer programming are occasional anti-trans comments, as well as sporadic posts about the handling of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout.

In recent weeks, the frequency of those posts increased. In one comment he calls former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern a “truly disgusting human being” and likens the Covid-19 response to that of Nazi Germany.

In another post, he calls Ardern’s successor Chris Hipkins “scum of the Earth” because he “forced people to get vaccinated to keep their jobs”.

Other than Linkedin, there doesn’t seem to be much of an online presence for Young, at least under his real name.

Prominent sceptic Kelvin Morgan, who has kept tabs on the anti-vaccination movement for years, said he hadn’t seen Young’s name popping up in any of the spaces that conspiracy theorists often post.

The first Morgan saw of Young was in a video with renowned New Zealand conspiracy theorist Liz Gunn, where the duo revealed what Gunn said was data that would “bring down the greatest evil, I believe, that has been perpetrated on the most human beings around the world at the same time.”

Experts who have seen the data earlier, discredited that interpretation, tellingThe Post the situation is an example of misappropriating numbers in order to support an agenda.

The data itself is subject to a non-publication order.

During the video, Gunn said she only knew Young by the name Winston Smith – a name shared by the protagonist in Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s classic novel about a totalitarian government in a dystopian future.

His unveiling as a so-called “whistleblower” in the video is apparently the first appearance of Young in any anti-vaccination forum, and Gunn goes on to label Young a “hero”.

Young doesn’t shy away from the attention, and brings up famous scientists of the past who faced pushback from the scientific community.

“Throughout history we’ve had the great scientists of our time – the Copernicuses, the Keplers, Da Vinci… Newton, Einstein – they’ve all said things which were different to the consensus and they’ve all had the courage to do that,” he said to the camera, as the two discussed the leak and their place in the midst of it.

“They’ve all said ‘hang on a minute, this universe isn’t quite what we think it is, maybe try this,’ and they’ve all been vilified for that but then proven right at a later stage. That’s what science is, it’s not what we’ve been told what science is by the likes of [former chief medical advisor to the US president Anthony] Fauci.”

That video was released on November 30, the same day Te Whatu Ora chief executive Margie Apa said an employee had sent an email to government ministers and health authority employees claiming data had been leaked.

Since then, it has been a whirlwind of attention for Young.

Websites in the United States and New Zealand have picked up the data and claimed the Covid-19 vaccination caused large numbers of deaths. There have been four deaths possibly linked to adverse reactions following Covid-19 vaccination in Aotearoa to date.

Then on Sunday, he was arrested and charged with dishonestly accessing a computer. Two days later he appeared in court where entered no plea to the charge and was released on bail.

The next morning, the video with Jones went live, in which he outlined his attempts to share the information with MPs, including Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, but that he had “got nowhere”.

He said armed police had shown up to arrest him at his house and likened it to the Gestapo, the secret police force of Nazi Germany which perpetrated crimes including the Holocaust.

After he was released on bail, he also spoke to Kelvyn Alp, the founder of far-right media platform Counterspin, where he claimed orders for his arrest “came from the top”.

In response to questions about whether Te Whatu Ora was aware of what Young was doing online, a spokesperson from the health authority said there was an ongoing investigation.

Stuff has attempted to contact Young for comment.