George Floyd protests: Anonymous plays NWA's 'f**k tha police' after hacking into Chicago police dept radio
Protests have spread across the US as fast as the coronavirus in the wake of George Floyd's death on May 25. As law-keepers struggle to contain the violence, they are faced with a new challenge. The long-dormant hacktivist group 'Anonymous' has reappeared to back the protests against police brutality across cities in America. The group hijacked Chicago Police Department’s radio scanners to play now-defunct NWA's 1988 hip-hop classic 'F**k Tha Police'. The track was also a mark of protest against the law-keepers' brutality and it became an unofficial anthem of the Los Angeles Uprising of 1992. Anonymous also played polka music apparently to disrupt the cops' communication over the protests.
The hacktivist group's move came after it announced its return to social media on Saturday, May 30, to show solidarity with the global protests over Floyd's agonizing death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. The 46-year-old black man was handcuffed and pinned to the ground with one cop pressing his knee against Floyd's neck for eight minutes. He was left gasping for breath and pleaded for help but to no avail. The man eventually died and after a disturbing video of his plight went viral, people took to the streets in protest. The hacktivist group, while announced its intention to target the police departments of Minneapolis and Chicago, tweeted: "We stand in solidarity with the protesters and revolutionaries fighting the US oligarchy, fighting the injustice of a massively corrupt racist system that has continued on for generations. #BlackLivesMatter."
"If the police can’t restrain themselves and are shooting reporters, kicking protesters, punching protesters, and engaging in violence – how can anyone expect the people to restrain themselves? People are done being brutalized and murdered," Anonymous said in another tweet. Minneapolis Police Department’s website was also disabled along with the parent City of Minneapolis site, according to various users. By early Sunday, May 31, visitors to the site continued to see issues, including being forced to enter 'captchas' to prove they weren't bots in the front-end interface hosted by security firm Cloudflare. Meaning that the sites were facing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks meant to disable the site by flooding it with bogus traffic, Variety reported.
You aren't here to save but oppress us, Minneapolis police told
The disruption to the Minneapolis sites came after a Facebook page claiming to be affiliated with 'Anonymous' posted a video last week warning the Minneapolis Police Department that it "will be exposing your many crimes to the world" and that "this week’s brutal killing of George Floyd… is merely the tip of the iceberg in a long list of high-profile cases of wrongful death at the hands of officers in your state". The group further stated, "After the events of the past few years, many people are beginning to learn that you are not here to save us but rather you are here to oppress us and carry out the will of the criminal ruling class. You are here to keep order for the people in control, not to provide safety for the people who are controlled. In fact, you are the very mechanism that elites use to continue their global system of oppression."
The video, which has been viewed millions of times, shows a figure wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and an electronically changed voiceover — the hallmarks of the group. 'Anonymous' generally targets those it accuses of misusing power. However, tracking and pinning down the group — its ideology and size — is difficult because it lacks a central leadership, membership criteria and public space. The group, which launches online attacks against targets, first surfaced in 2008 after releasing a copyrighted Church of Scientology video featuring actor Tom Cruise. After the Scientologists demanded its removal, the group launched a number of DDoS attacks on the sect. Since then, the group has targeted various groups including the Islamic State and Ku Klux Klan and even corporate bodies like PayPal and Visa.