After causing major disruption to law enforcement in Ferguson during the summer protests over the killing of Michael Brown, the collective of hackers known as Anonymous has set its sights on the KKK after the hate group last week threatened Ferguson protesters with violence.
Calling the campaign OpKKK, the hacktivists have already disrupted KKK websites and publicly released personal information on KKK members, according to the techy website Motherboard.com.
Anonymous released a video on YouTube saying that while it respected the KKK’s right to free speech, the hate group had overstepped the mark by threatening physical violence.
Last week, the Missouri chapter of the infamous terrorist organization put out fliers to warn the public that they “will use lethal force as provided under Missouri Law to defend ourselves.”
The leader of the Missouri chapter, Frank Ancona, spoke to MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Wednesday to explain why the KKK distributed the warning fliers.
“Actually it’s addressing the people who are making these terroristic threats and letting them know that the people of Missouri have rights too,” Ancona said.
Ancona believes that his warning fliers addressed to “the terrorists masquerading as ‘peaceful protestors’,” is making the situation better in Ferguson.
Motherboard said Anonymous had “hit a range of KKK websites over the weekend through to today, including kkk.com, unskkkk.com and traditionalistamericanknights.com, with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Those sites were intermittently down today. At least two Twitter accounts have also been compromised: @KluKluxKlanUSA and @YourKKKCentral.”
Motherboard also indicated that OpKKK appears to be working alongside OpFerguson, the group that caused major disruptions in Ferguson after Brown’s death. After claiming that it had broken into Ferguson’s municipal computer system, Anonymous released details about city workers and posted photos of Jon Belmar, the chief of the St. Louis County Police Department, in addition to pictures of his wife, son and daughter and his home address and telephone number.
Anonymous warned police not to overreact to rallies and protests. Anonymous also released the dispatcher’s tape showing that the officer who shot Brown never called for police backup or for EMS response. Anonymous threatened to release video showing officers throwing Brown’s body into the back of a vehicle—after the body allegedly was lying in the street for hours. Before the release of the name of Officer Darren Wilson as the shooter of Brown, Anonymous threatened to release his name—but then released the wrong name, taking major flack for the error.
OpKKK said it would release personal information on Klan members over the next 24 hours unless the Klan stopped threatening physical force against protesters. The OpKKK Twitter user said the attacks would stop “when the people of Ferguson receive freedom and are able to protest peacefully without threats or being harmed by organisations such as the KKK.”
The grand jury verdict on whether to charge Wilson in the shooting of Brown is expected this week.
