The group of hackers known as "Anonymous" has threatened to expose the many crimes of the Minneapolis Police. According to Forbes' latest report, the hacktivist group has surfaced in an unsurprising move to add its voice to those people criticizing the Minneapolis Police Department after the death of George Floyd on May 25 which involved members of their Department.
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A video was released by the loosely affiliated hackers as the widespread civil unrest escalated in many cities throughout the United States. The video threatened the MPD saying that it will expose the Department's other crimes to the world. And their threats may have been successful since MPD's website was offline late on Saturday, May 30, as the problems continued to surface through the night.
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The report stated that users who were trying to access the site on Sunday, May 31, were asked to complete a captcha to make sure that they were not automated bots orchestrating a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Although the Anonymous hacktivist group didn't claim that they took down the MPD's website, an account claiming affiliation with the group retweeted the news stating that the website of MPD was offline.
The Minneapolis PD website has been taken offline by Anonymous & they're threatening to take down any government website for any organization attacking protestors — William LeGate (@williamlegate) May 31, 2020
The report explained that since the Anonymous is a loose affiliation of hackers, it would only take a self-styled member to be involved in an attack for it to seemingly fit under its banner.
"Anonymous" hacktivist group threatens to expose the many crimes of Minneapolis Police; Who are they?
The video from Anonymous was viewed almost 2 million times after it was posted to a Facebook page affiliated with the hacktivist group on May 28. A masked narrator with an electronic voice spoke in the middle of a montage of news footage.
The narration claimed that the death of George Floyd was "merely the tip of the iceberg." It also accused the MPD of having a "horrific track record of corruption and violence". The hackers were said to have acted after numerous MPD killings in recent years.
"Sadly, in the vast majority of police killings, the only one left alive to tell the story is the officer who took the person's life," said the Anonymous narrator. "This travesty has gone on for far too long . . . and now the people have had enough."
According to Metro's latest report, Anonymous is composed of online activists whose main goal is to target establishment corruption and hypocrisy. The group first surfaced when a copyrighted Scientology video starring Tom Cruise was leaked on YouTube in 2008. Anonymous started using online attacks as a form of non-violent protest following a regular DDos attacks against websites in support of copyright in 2010.
