Websites for the RCMP appear to be back online and in working order after going down earlier this morning.
It remains unclear if the Anonymous hacker group was responsible for the outage. Calls to the RCMP have not been able for comment, though other media reports say the shutdown was due to maintenance.
Several RCMP sites failed to load Sunday just one day after Anonymous vowed to “avenge one of our own” in response to a fatal officer-involved shooting outside a Dawson Creek restaurant Thursday night.
The group took to social media claiming to have crashed parts of the RCMP website.
A Twitter account associated with the global activist group posted photos showing the Dawson Creek RCMP website server status listed as “down.”
Police have not yet confirmed whether there is a connection between the man who was shot and killed outside of a Site C open house, and evidence on social media of a plan to disrupt and cancel the event.
Although police have confirmed the man who was shot was wearing a mask, authorities are not confirming whether it was the Guy Fawkes mask associated with Anonymous.
“I have not had time to gather specific details from our forensic specialist with the exception that the knife was located here at the scene,” Kellie Kilpatrick, executive director of public accountability with the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) said at a media conference July 17, when asked about the type of mask the victim was wearing.
Anonymous has made public its intention to search for and publish private and identifying information about the officer involved, a practice it calls “doxing.”
The group has also put out a call to its members and allies to “remove the RCMP cyber infrastructure from the internet. March, create and sign petitions, hack, dox.”
The RCMP could not be reached for comment Sunday morning.
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