UPDATE: TPM is back up and running. they have the full story on their site, and still no direct evidence of the involvement of “Anonymous” at this point, but the story is still developing.
This evening Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted a note on TPM’s Facebook page describing a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) that caused the site to crash at about 5:00 this afternoon.
There has been no claim of responsibility, but the attack comes on the heels of TPM’s publication of fourteen mugshots of members of Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group that has been linked to related attacks on media and other outlets for taking action against Wikileaks.
This attack on freedom of the press is a serious threat, and demonstrates an ugly totalitarian streak in an organization that has allegedly taken a position in favor of public dissent.
Anyone who has been supportive or sympathetic of Anonymous to this point should reconsider supporting an organization that appears to be attempting to crush, rather than support, dissent.
If they were DOS’ing due to the photos, I’d expect they’d have DOS’ed the actual source, which was cited in the TPM article:
http://gawker.com/5838756/thes…
This just doesn’t “smell” like an “anonymous” action – especially since the source is still up, and since the photos are public record, anyway.
Given all the people TPM has pissed off over the years, I imagine there are plenty of people and groups who might want to DOS them.
That’s not to say I think it’s impossible, just that I’d like to see a bit more evidence before laying blame.