Security News > 2020 > June > ‘Anonymous’ takes down Atlanta Police Dept. site after police shooting
Following Friday's fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks - a 27-year-old Black man who fell asleep in a fast-food drive-in lane in Atlanta and was shot while running from police who tried to tase him - hackers affiliating themselves with the Anonymous hacktivist collective may have briefly taken down the website for the city's police department.
Three days later, Anonymous hackers posted a video that threatened to "Expose the many crimes" of Minneapolis police.
At any rate, following Friday's killing of Rayshard Brooks, Anonymous-affiliated hackers - or, perhaps, hackers sympathetic to BLM, or any hackers exploiting the climate of rage - may have turned their attention to the website of the Atlanta Police Department.
Zak Doffman - founder and CEO of Digital Barriers, which develops advanced surveillance for defense, national security and counter-terrorism - wrote an in-depth article for Forbes about the problem of attribution when it comes to Anonymous and what might or might not be its members' responsibility for the DDoSes against the two police departments' sites.
As The Hill reports, some police departments have switched to encrypted communications, citing the need to keep criminals from listening in on police radio channels through phone apps - a move that's been criticized by media outlets that say it will potentially conceal public safety information from the public.