It seems, as usual, there is a decided lack of continuity from one release team to the next, at least as regards infrastructure knowledge.
Indeed. Thanks for your patience.
On the current (old) server while most files are owned by and maintained by website, the webteam shared account, certain directories, like 4.4 and 4.4alpha, are owned by updates (actually they should have updates as the owner and website as the group so the webteam still has also has access). The 'updates' account should be accessible by the relevant member(s) of the release team. In fact it appears to me that Chris Muller does have access to the updates account on the server.
Ah, by that you mean my ssh public-key is authorized for the updates account? Forgot about that.