Open Thread: 'Hacktivists' Target Palin for WikiLeaks Criticism?

December 9th, 2010 9:39 AM

The former Alaska governor's website was the subject of a distrubuted denial of service attack yesterday. Palin also claims that her credit card information was revealed. ABC's Jake Tapper reported:

Hackers in London that the Palin team believe to be affiliated with “Operation Payback” – a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts, SarahPAC aide Rebecca Mansour said.

“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange's antics,” Palin emailed ABC News. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

Palin has criticized Wikileaks founder Assange, writing on Facebook that his “past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?...Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist.’ He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."

As Stephen Gutowski of NB sister site Eyeblast.tv , the attack fits the profile of the same group that hacked Palin's email account during the 2008 presidential campaign. That group also has ties to Wikileaks.

What are your thoughts on all this? Can we confidently claim that the attack was directly correlated to Palin's Wikileaks criticism?