It seems that nobody over the age of forty seems able to comprehend that taking down a website is a fairly easy thing to do. Websites have lots of security holes. It’s the protest equivalent of ripping down a flyer.
On the other hand, it does result in a fairly hilarious round of finger-pointing, as the FTC, their PR agency, and that PR agency’s site hosting are now demonstrating.
The facts are these: a few days ago, in the throes of its usual hissy fit, Anonymous took down a few web sites paid for by the Federal Trade Commission. We’re not talking sites anybody would miss: they were basic educational sites, the Web equivalent of a brochure.
The problem is, despite very clear federal rules on security and cloud hosting, the FTC didn’t bother to tell anybody to comply with said rules. In fact, they bothered so little, none of the standard language was in the contract for the website and the hosting company is claiming it didn’t even know .gov sites were on its servers.
So, now somebody is calling for somebody else’s head, and everybody’s trying to figure out who to shove under the bus. It’d all be highly entertaining if these people weren’t technically in charge of keeping America safe from evil corporations.
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