Anonymous has initiated an operation to bring the system down

Aug 13, 2012 07:33 GMT  ·  By

WikiLeaks has been under constant attack for some while now and the whistleblower site’s representatives think they know why. They believe that it might have something to do with a mass surveillance program called TrapWire, a campaign revealed by the leaked Stratfor files.

“Attacks on wikileaks-press.org escalated after Wikileaks retweeted links to our mirrors of leaked files from WikiLeaks on a newly discovered mass surveillance program known as TrapWire,” WikiLeaks representatives explained.

“With that in mind, these attacks appear at a first glance to be part of an intimidation campaign; in the absence of any statements by the attackers, we are left only with speculation.”

In the meantime, Anonymous has revealed the start of Operation TrapWire. According to the hacktivists, the system uses facial recognition and complex artificial intelligence to monitor individuals, its official purpose being to prevent terrorism.

However, the hackers highlight that the system gives governments and corporation “unprecedented data-mining capabilities” that violate human rights.

Apparently, TrapWire doesn’t only monitor social media, but it also utilizes a number of CCTV cameras located in various places around New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas, Washington, London and other cities in the United States.

“The PLF and Anonymous will work closely with WikiLeaks and Project PM to gather, collate, disclose and disseminate as much information as possible about TrapWire and its related technologies and programs,” they stated.

“This was begun this weekend, and already much has been learned. And they are scared of this, already many sites and repositories of data on TrapWire are disappearing - being taken down by those who do not want you to know the truth about what they are doing.”

The hackers conclude their statement by revealing their plan to hack and “destroy” all the servers used by the system.