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Visitors to www.finegael2011.com were this evening presented with this message, posted by members of the Anonymous collective.
Anonymous
Fine Gael website defaced by Anonymous 'hacktivists'
The leaderless online activists deface Fine Gael’s controversial new website, advising users that the party ‘censors their voice’.
9.31pm, 9 Jan 2011
8.0k
10
Updated, 13.37, 10/1/11
FINE GAEL’S NEW WEBSITE was last night defaced by the anonymous hacker group ‘Anonymous’, which replaced the party’s new ‘tell us what you think’ campaign with a holding page telling visitors that the party was censoring submissions.
The site – launched amid much fanfare on Tuesday – had loaded as usual for web users, before users saw its content disappear and be replaced with a message issued by two members of the Anonymous collective, reading:
Nothing is safe, you put your faith in this political party and they take no measures to protect you.
They offer you free speech yet they censor your voice.
WAKE UP!
Furthermore, the page’s title changed to read: ‘The problem with politicians is they lie’ – a play on the party’s own message, that politicians talk too much and listen too little.
Examination of the site’s HTML code suggested that the malicious code appears on the site when it tried to display a user’s comments about how Ireland could be ‘fixed’, loading a string of JavaScript code which when made the Anonymous-branded page appear in place of the intended site.
The site has now been removed altogether; visitors now are instead presented with a holding page which indicates that the site’s webmasters have temporarily deactivated the site entirely.
Fine Gael’s ‘traditional’ site, which had remained active at finegael.org, also remains offline at the time of writing; this also appears to have been a reactive move from within the party itself.
On Friday TheJournal.ie reported that the new website was based on servers in Miami, meaning that none of the Dáil’s political parties had their main websites based within Ireland.
The site’s US-based hosting had also raised concerns within the blogosphere about the party’s compliance with the Data Protection Acts, and whether their transfer of personal data to a host outside of the EU was being done on a compliant legal basis.
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@Joseph Gibbons: I used to live on that road. It’s so bad. So many by-roads coming directly onto the main road which is 100km speed limit. When heading Dublin way there is an Applegreen on the right but there is no middle lane for people to go into if they want to turn right so have to stay on the road. There are blind hills and if coming out of byroads, most of the time can’t see whats coming until you are nearly on the road.
@Alan Kenny: Totally agree. Was only driving on that road yesterday and said how lethal it was and how a bad accident would happen soon. It should also be 2 lanes in some places, to allow for safer over taking. Some of the over taking I have seen on that road are the most dangerous I have ever seen.
@Jay: I travel on that road a lot and there really is a need for overtaking lanes in numerous places. People should also have a bit of courtesy and pull in to let traffic by aswell though, hugging the white line at 80kmph while car after car builds up behind you is not helping anyone. Checking mirrors and moving out of the way when safe to do so for traffic to pass is just common sense.
@Jimmy Wallace: all valid points but driving at 80kmph stuck to the white line can create problems too and suggests that the person doing this is either thick and wants to make it awkward for anyone to overtake or they aren’t paying attention to what is going on around them. It’s no big effort to move towards the hard shoulder when safe to do so to allow traffic to pass.
Mute Go on Leo, go ahead and try enforced payment durin
Favourite Go on Leo, go ahead and try enforced payment durin
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Aug 22nd 2023, 11:38 AM
@Jimmy Wallace: Wrong. Slow driving is a huge problem. People crawling along thinking they are making everyone safer when they are doing the opposite by not applying reason to the environment. Speeding is not the biggest problem either.. phone usage and other distractions, terrible signalling and roundabout usage and general lack of awareness/consideration for others are much worse than exceeding the speed limit by 10 or 20%.
@Jimmy Wallace: Road hogs are a very big problem especially on some of our busier roads which are not fit for purpose. All main routes should be four lanes . Whatever the traffic numbers say they justify it or not. they are many times safer.
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