Posted on August 12, 2009 - by Venik

Now breakaway government denounces internet attack

Officials from Abkhazia say they disagree with attempts to silence one of their most vocal critics – while Twitter takes to the TV to explain itself

Last week’s enormous attacks against popular websites are being largely referred to as a campaign by political activists to shut down the online presence belonging to anti-Kremlin blogger Cyxyxmu. And although there has been speculation over who was behind it, clear information has been hard to come by.

However, I’ve received contact from one of the possible actors to say that they do not support the attacks – even though they disagree with Cyxymu’s politics.

The government of the Republic of Abkhazia, the disputed territory that lent Cyxymu his monicker, has said that it does not agree with the attempt to silence him. Here’s the full statement from Christian Bzhania, a government spokesman:

“The Government of the Republic of Abkhazia denounces last week’s reported cyber attack on a Georgian blogger writing about the events leading up to the August 2008 war. We think the Internet is a powerful tool for sharing information and reaching beyond borders to encourage constructive debate.

“Our government strongly supports the right to free speech. The posting by the Georgian blogger was riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods, but it doesn’t excuse an illegal effort on the Internet to silence him. We will cooperate with any investigation into that incident.

“As an independent nation, Abkhazia is working hard to build a democracy, which includes the rights of its citizens to voice their opinions freely. Our government welcomes all opportunities to engage with the international community, including dialogue on the Internet. But our efforts to interact with the global community continue to be stifled by the policies of Georgia and its western supporters to isolate our nation. We hope the world will join us in encouraging Georgia to open the doors for a legitimate and respectful discussion about a path to peace in our region.”

(Some background information: the region announced that it was ceding from Georgia in the early 1990s, and pro-Georgian Cyxymu started his blog for refugees of the conflict that ensued.)

Elsewhere, after a lot of confusion last week, people at the blunt end of the affair are now starting to discuss things in the open – not least Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who is taking to the television to discuss the events with an appearance on America’s Tavis Smiley show (due to air tomorrow). He suggested that the company would take lessons from Google – which was also targeted, but resisted the strikes – on how to fend off the bad guys.

“What we learned from this was you’ve got to tune your systems to be able to handle this level of assault, this scale of assault. You know we spent a lot of 2008 catching up with a lot of the popularity of the Twitter, unexpected popularity, getting their technically so we’re stable – and along comes this massive attack,” he said. “We learned a lot from it: we worked behind the scenes with folks from Google and other companies to figure out how to stop the attacks and how to better deal with them in the future.”

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