Happy Valentines Day: Anonymous takes down web sites for tear gas company and Bahrain government
(Image: Anonymous)
Marking today’s anniversary of the Bahrain anti-government uprising, the hacker group Anonymous shut down the Bahrain government’s website, along with the websites of several U.S. manufacturers of “less than lethal” weapons.
From a statement posted by the group today:
So you war profiteering all crazy, selling mad chemical weapons to militaries and cop shops around the world, thinking you will get away unscathed by the rising tides of insurrection?
Combined Systems website, shut down by Anonymous.
The international hacking collaborative also targeted tear gas producer Combined Systems Inc. (CSI), citing the death and injury caused by the company’s tear gas canisters, and its use by police forces in the occupied Palestinian territories and against the Occupy Wall Street movement:
From the streets of Oakland to Tahrir Square, to Palestine, Greece, Bahrain and Syria, your sinister instruments of torture and brutality have been used by the vile swine enforcers of the rich ruling classes to repress our revolutionary movements. You shot and gassed protesters, running them off public parks in the US. Several dozen died because of your tear gas used in Egypt. You wave the Israeli flag outside of your offices, while just two months ago your tear gas cannisters fired by the IDF killed a man in the West Bank. Did you think we forgot? Why did you not expect us?
The actions are part of a larger campaign known as HackVDay, commemorating protest in Bahrain and drawing attention to the on-going military crackdowns. According to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, last year 14 were killed as a result of tear gas, and in the past month two protesters died of tear gas inhalation.
Additional weapons companies websites targeted by the hacker group include sur-tec.com, less-lethal.com, handcuffsusa.com, and pennarms.com. Anonymous also threatened tech workers for the weapons companies, stating:
[I]f you so much as lift a finger to support CSI in rebuilding their websites, we will post all your mail on you and all your clients.
At the time of writing this article, off the hacked websites, excluding the Bahrain government, were still non-operational.