Page 24 - aruba-today-20190806

A24 technology
Tuesday 6 augusT 2019

Online providers knock 8chan offline after mass shooting

By FRANK BAJAK proven itself to be a cess-
AP Cybersecurity Writer pool of hate,” wrote Prince.
BOSTON (AP) — The online “They have proven them-
message board 8chan was selves to be lawless and
effectively knocked offline that lawlessness has caused
Monday after two compa- multiple tragic deaths.”
nies cut off vital technical With the big social net-
services following the mass works doing a better job of
shooting in El Paso, Texas moderating hate speech,
, whose perpetrator was incitement to violence
linked to the site. 8chan and harassment, extreme
is known for trafficking in speech is gravitating to
anonymous hate speech smaller websites that are
and incitement of hate often little more than mes-
crimes. sage boards — sites teen-
A racist “manifesto” posted agers routinely make in
to the site is believed to their bedrooms, said Joan
have been written by the Donovan, the director of
suspect in a Saturday’s kill- the technology and social
ing of 22 people in El Paso, change project at Harvard
Texas. If it was, it would be University’s Kennedy School
the third known instance of Government.
of a shooter posting to Services like Cloudflare or
the site before going on a Locals bring flowers, stuffed animals, candles and posters to honor the memory of the victims of BitMitigate are necessary
rampage, following mass the mass shooting occurred in Walmart on Saturday morning in El Paso on Sunday, August 4, 2019. to keep extremist-tolerant
shootings at two New Zea- Associated Press message boards like 8chan
land mosques in the spring, nial-of-service attacks that In the absence of regula- came clear to Voxility after online because they typi-
and another at a California can make them unreach- tion, it falls on internet ser- the El Paso shooting “that cally attract hostile traffic
synagogue. able — the kind of online vices companies in the these guys were not going from hacktivists aimed at
Late Sunday, the security armor that contentious United States to ban online to stop,” Sirbu said. “We overwhelming the sites and
company Cloudflare an- message boards require to speech deemed unac- will not renew services for making them unreachable.
nounced it was cutting off survive. ceptable. these guys and will ensure But without them, it’s dif-
the message board, which But on Monday, London- Neither 8chan nor Daily that they don’t return to ficult for any site of conse-
has a history of use by vio- based Voxility, a provider Stormer were reachable Voxility under false names.” quence to survive.
lent extremists, for being “a of network hardware and on Monday afternoon, Neither 8chan nor Epik.com We’re not going to get rid
cesspool of hate.” services, upended both when the person identify- representatives could im- of message boards,” said
8chan quickly found a new Epik and BitMitigate by ter- ing themselves as 8chan’s mediately be reached for Donovan. “But we stifle the
online host: Sammamish, minating its contract with administrator tweeted that comment despite attempts spread and the impact of
Washington-based Epik. the companies, said Maria “strategies are being de- via email and LinkedIn. these manifestos by refus-
com, whose site declares Sirbu, the company’s vice veloped to bring services On Sunday, Cloudflare ing to let them elevate to
it “the Swiss bank of do- president of business devel- back online.” CEO Matthew Prince wrote the level of mainstream
mains.” Epik provides simi- opment. Two weeks ago, Voxility in- in a blog post that the sus- media.”
lar support for Gab.com, “We have made the con- formed the Daily Stormer pect in El Paso “appears to Two years ago, Cloudflare
another social media site nection that at least two that it was in violation of have been inspired” by dis- terminated service to the
frequented by white su- or three of the latest mass the company’s abuse poli- cussions on 8chan. Daily Stormer, which on
premacists that doesn’t shooting in the U.S. were cies and then cut off its ser- He said a suspect in an Sunday Prince lamented as
ban hate speech. connected with these vice for a day, said Sirbu, earlier shooting at a syna- “still available and still dis-
Epik also owns the secu- guys,” Sirbu said. “At some who said her company has gogue in Poway, California, gusting.”
rity company BitMitigate, point, somebody needed 20 data centers worldwide also posted a “hate-filled “They have bragged that
whose clients include the to make the decision on and operates in 80 coun- ‘open letter’” on 8chan, as they have more readers
Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi where the limit is between tries. did the mosque attacker than ever,” he said. “They
and white supremacist site. what is illegal and what is Service was restored after in Christchurch, New Zea- are no longer Cloudflare’s
Like Cloudflare, BitMitigate freedom of speech and to- the objectionable content land. problem, but they remain
protects web sites from de- day it had to be us.” was removed. But it be- “8chan has repeatedly the Internet’s problem.”q

Pentagon is reviewing the ‘war cloud’

contract Amazon wants

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — tially biased toward Am- until the review is com-
The Pentagon said new azon. The e-commerce plete. Esper has previously
Secretary of Defense Mark giant and Microsoft have said he wants to “take a
Esper is reviewing the bid been competing for the hard look” at the JEDI con-
process for the military’s contract, known as the tract. The Washington Post
$10 billion cloud-comput- Joint Enterprise Defense reported Thursday, citing
In this June 19, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump, from ing contract . Infrastructure plan, or JEDI. anonymous sources, that
left, and Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, President Donald Trump In a statement, Pentagon the White House ordered
listen as Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive Officer of Amazon, speaks has criticized the process, spokeswoman Elissa Smith the Pentagon review. Am-
during an American Technology Council roundtable in the
State Dinning Room of the White House in Washington. citing complaints from oth- said that no decision will azon founder and CEO
Associated Press er companies, as poten- be made on the program Jeff Bezos owns the Post.q