A Hong Kong member of the US-based hacking group Anonymous - who claims to have paralysed several government websites with cyber attacks - says he plans similar attacks in Hong Kong and the mainland as part of the July 1 protests.
The man, who calls himself T, says protesters are resorting to hacking because normal demonstrations are hampered by public order laws and the police. He claimed in an interview that he and others had earlier disabled the websites of the police, judiciary, Department of Justice and Correctional Services Department in retaliation for his arrest for trying to mobilise attacks through his Facebook page.
'Normal protests cannot allow people to air their grievances now,' T said. 'They are either regulated by laws relating to public order or blocked by police. When officers close half of the roads, there is nothing you can do.'
He said he was now considering attacks on Hong Kong government websites and sites on the mainland, on the July 1 handover anniversary. He had not decided on the theme, but it could be raising awareness of people, especially mainlanders, on the suspicious death of veteran June 4 dissident Li Wangyang .
The 23-year-old hacker said he used a method termed DDoS - distributed denial of service - to mount the attacks by swamping the websites with vast amounts of data. He said the attacks on the four departments had been triggered by his own arrest and several other prosecutions he thought were political.
