No, the real news yesterday revolved around a shadowy group, known as Anonymous (catchy, I know, and oh so Google-able) that launched Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against MasterCard and Visa. They creatively called their escapade "Operation Payback". The end result, the websites were either slowed to a crawl or were down entirely for part of the day.
The financial organizations' crime? Earlier this week, they stopped allowing credit card-based donations on the WikiLeaks web site. So this group, which has no apparent leader - but does have a 22-year-old guy in London known as "Coldblood" claiming to be a spokesperson - decided to take action against them to protest against censorship on the Internet. Previously, this group, which numbers about 1,000 members worldwide, took on, among others, the Church of Scientology and Gene Simmons of the rock group, Kiss.
- I wrote this story for The Toronto Star: Turning back the virtual mob
- I spoke live with CTV News Channel's Jennifer Ward. The interview is here*.
- Robert Fife, CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief, interviewed me for his report on the 11 p.m. national newscast. Here's the link to my badly captured video, and here's the report from CTV's server. I've also embedded it below. Newscast main link is here.
*The interview was a little shorter than usual, as they had to quickly cut me off and jump to a news conference where Toronto's top cop, Bill Blair, talked about his department's handling of security during the G20 conference in Toronto. There's something neat about live television because you never know what'll happen. It wouldn't be as much fun otherwise.
