It was bad of Anonymous to make good on threat to attack Boston PD

Anonymous has taken another opportunity to be useful and wasted it on another fruitless attack. This time the Boston Police Department website is the victim.

I learned of this from my old friend and colleague O’Ryan Johnson, who wrote this for The Boston Herald:

The Boston police web site BPDNews.com has been hacked this morning and currently features an anti-cop music video by hip-hop artist KRS-ONE. Boston police department spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll declined to comment.

The hacker group Anonymous claimed credit for the cyber attack. Anonymous had previously attacked the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association Web site and released the e-mail addresses and passwords of city cops.

“Do you remember a few months ago when #antisec attaked (sic)the Boston Police and released hundred of passwords in retaliation for the brutality against Occupy Boston?” Anonymous posted to the police department’s web site. “They clearly ignored our warnings, because not only did they raid the camp again and kicked protesters off of public parks, but they also sent undercover TSA agents to assualt and attempt to steal from some organizers.”

In place of the Web site Anonymous played a music video “Sound of Da Police” by KRS-ONE, a song that compares police to plantation overseers in the pre-Civil War south.

“ We get kicks defacing and rm’n (sic) your websites – again,” the hacker group posted in place of the Web site. “(T)he ‘Boston Poice (sic) Department Virtual Community’ also fell to the swift merciless veangeance of the hive.”

Anonymous has the capacity to come to the table and help privacy and security advocates solve big problems. Instead it does something that benefits no one. All they succeeded in doing was inconveniencing some web master who works for the City of Boston. They also cut off access to a site a lot of people rely upon.

As I said after the first attack on the Boston PD, Anonymous should read and learn from “Building a Better Anonymous” by Josh Corman and Brian Martin.The Corman-Martin project examines, among other things, “how Anonymous has failed in theory and practice” and how the organization could do some real good if it wants to.

Unfortunately, as time marches on, my hope that Anonymous will do something for the greater good dwindles.