Anonymous has been attempting to block government websites
in Costa Rica since Monday, February25, and says it will continue until
late March, but so far their efforts appear to have had little impact. The
attacks are in protest of Costa Rica’s “gag law”, which has been in effect for over
a year.
The hacked sites were allegedly the Regulatory Authority of
Public Services (Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos, or “Aresep”), the
Costa Rican Institute of Sport and Recreation (Instituto Costarricense del
Deporte y la Recreación, or “Icoder”), and the Ministry of Public Education (Ministerio
de Educación Públic, “MEP”).
As of this writing all three sites are up and running.
Alexánder Vargas, MEP’s IT manager, has said that the his has seen a lot of traffic of late, which could be consistent with a distributed
denial of service (DDOS) attack, though that could not be confirmed.
MEP’s website was down for two hours on Monday, with no word
as to why.
Via a press release, “Anonymous Iberoamerica” said Costa
Rica’s gag law limits freedom of expression and encourages the persecution of
those who expose government corruption.
The group said that the law not only limits freedom of
expression, it “lays the groundwork for the prosecution and punishment of any public
expression on the Internet that might undermine or violate the interests of the
current government.”
Known as the Computer Crimes Act (Ley de Delitos
Informáticos), the law first came into play in July, 2012. It gives the government
the right to punish individuals with lengthy prison terms if they seek to
obtain, report on, or diffuse undefined "secret political information".
Later in 2012 the president of Costa Rica’s College of
Journalists, José Rodolfo Ibarr, wrote in an editorial:
"Everyone, and I repeat, all of us, are under a latent
threat of being investigated, pursued, captured, tried and jailed, with
sentences ranging from four to ten years in prison, with no access to parole.”
(TE Wilson is the author of Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel.)
(TE Wilson is the author of Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel.)
Twitter: @TimothyEWilson
Email: lapoliticaeslapolitica [at] gmail [dot] com
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