‘Anonymous’ has ramped up response to deadly police shooting in Dawson Creek: analyst

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A high-profile hacktivist group is escalating its response.

It comes after “Anonymous” made some disturbing threats following a police-involved shooting in northern BC last week.

The national RCMP website and the site for the Dawson Creek detachment both went down yesterday morning.

The day before, Anonymous had posted a video threatening to do just that, and to “out” the police officer who pulled the trigger — to identify that officer publicly.

“The threatened outing, or, it’s often known as ‘doxing,’ of the officer’s information, is a bit of an escalation. They typically don’t go that far,” says technology analyst Carmi Levy.

“But clearly, this is a case where they do believe a wrong has been committed, and they are using their online tools as a way of — in their view — righting that wrong,” he adds.

Levy says each case with Anonymous is somewhat different. He tells us in the overall scheme of online hacking, Anonymous is not as dangerous as other hackers.

“They don’t steal information. They’re not launching identity-theft attacks against us. They’re not breaking into our bank accounts. They’re simply trying to raise awareness, and they do so by taking websites down, by bomarding them with requests until they can no longer handle the pressure. And so in the overall hierarchy of hacking, this is really not as bad as it could be.”

Levy says there isn’t much we can do, but recommends having a “Plan B” in case a website we normally use is down.

“We’ve seen a significant acceleration in recent months of Anonymous’ activities. They seem to be getting involved in a far greater number of issues globally, and interestingly, a lot of those seem to target Canada. This is our new normal. Sadly, this kind of thing is going to be happening more often in the future because, as we’ve seen, it’s effective in getting us to pay attention. They’re essentially acheiving their goals.”

Anonymous claims the man who was shot Thursday night was the fourth member of the group in the world, killed by what it calls “security forces.”

The man was outside a public meeting on the Site C Dam.

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