14 DAY TRIAL // The Ztohoven "artistic group" is currently under investigation by the authorities for the members' involvement in the hacking of the Czech TV broadcast. Ztohoven interfered with the Panorama program, a show designed to offer viewers live access of different Czech locations via panoramic cameras and introduced their own piece of montage instead of depicting a nuclear explosion. Instead of getting weather information from across the Czech Republic, the viewer got to witness an extremely realistic mushroom cloud. Make sure to watch the video embedded at the bottom to get a first hand impression of Ztohoven's nuclear incident.
"We are neither a terrorist organization nor a political group, our aim is not to intimidate the society or manipulate it, which is something we witness on daily basis both in real world and in the world created by the media. Whether the reasons are political interests, market interests, financial interests or interests of supranational companies - we meet hidden manipulation and attempt to invade the subconscious mind of citizens with specific products or ideology, using all available means. We do not think that a subtle distortion of such system or an appeal to pure common sense of people and their ability to remain unaffected are harmful, not even in a democratic society," reads a fragment of a statement released by the Ztohoven group following the attack.
The Czech Television's CT2 channel revealed that indeed one of their web cameras was hacked and taken over by the Ztohoven group and that it has filed criminal complaints in accordance. The Czech police is investigating the incident, but no additional details have been made public at this time. Martin Krafl, a Czech TV spokesman criticized the group's action as "inadvisable" and a potential source of panic for the viewers. The Ztohoven group took full responsibility for the broadcasting interference from 17 June 2007 claiming that the only harm done was to the credibility of the channel.
The attack "drew attention to the possibility of using images of the world created by the media in place of the existing, real world.Is everything we see daily on our TV screens real? Is everything presented to us by the media, newspapers, television, Internet actually real? This is the concept our project would like to introduce and remind of. We believe that even the free space of public service broadcaster is able to endure such action and such impeachment. We hope our action will become an appeal for the future and remind the media of their duty to bring out the truth," the Ztohoven group added.