Anonymous Hacks Private Prison Company Website
A protester wearing an Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask takes part in a demonstration against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as part of an international day of action against the increasingly-contested anti-piracy accord.
After high-profile takeovers of recording industry and Justice Department websites last month, hackers affiliated with the Anonymous movement had a new target Friday: the for-profit prison industry.
Hackers defaced the website for the Florida-based GEO Group, the nation's second-largest operator of private prisons, calling the attack "part of our ongoing efforts to dismantle the prison industrial complex."
The domain www.geogroup.com was replaced Friday morning with a black screen headlined by the symbol "#antisec," a term for the Anti-Security Movement, which is affiliated with the online coalition known as Anonymous.
The hacked site also featured a photo of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther whose death sentence for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer has since been converted to life imprisonment. Abu-Jamal's case has received international attention from opponents of the death penalty.
"While most folks are suffering under the economy, many billions of dollars are being funneled into this sinister conniving alliance of capitalist and statist forces," stated a message on the hacked site. "What they did not figure into their plans was a determined effort to shut them down."
As of early Friday evening, the company had removed the messages, but the website was still down. A blue screen told viewers "This domain is under construction and will be available soon." A spokesman for the GEO Group did not return an email seeking comment.
02/24/12