Staging a protest against an authority is one of the fundamental rights of citizens of a state. Staging a protest included masses gathering up with banners stating their demands. However, as seen in the current scenario, the art of protesting is taking a huge turn towards the use of technology to stage destructive protests.
As seen in August last year, a massive protest against Venezuela’s government took a new way. Innovation and improvisation at its best for staging a protest, a group of hackers identifying themselves collectively under the name of “The Binary Guardians” hacked almost 40 government websites. They say that it is in the protest against what they believe is the ‘dictatorship’ of President Nicolas Maduro. The Venezuelan Government Websites Hacking is one of the few modern protests made around the globe. It included the pasting of a movie’s poster on main government websites to trouble the working of government matters.
And now this trend has been carried forward to stage a protest against New Zealand’s police department. Unknown individuals hacked police radio station and then broadcasted the NWA song from 1988 known as “Fuck the Police”. This song has strong words for what protesters believe is “police ‘brutality”. Not only this but another song was played also. This song was by Rage called Against the Machine.
This shocking incident caused great trouble for on-duty police officials as it created a hindrance in their duty tasks. Inspector Kelvin Lloyd from the New Zealand police department commented on this matter and termed it as a dangerous situation:
“There’s no question that if it carries on and if they do what they’re doing it will delay a response… Any interference with a police radio constitutes a risk to public safety, and anyone caught doing this can face a penalty of criminal nuisance and up to one year imprisonment.”
What makes this matter of hacked police radio even more disturbing is that this isn’t the first occurrence of such an event with New Zealand’s police department. In mid 2017, a similar situation occurred when an unknown individual found way to broadcast pig grunts, obscene abuse, and rap music over police radio in the lower North Island.
Investigation into that matter turned out that such anti-cop outbursts on police communications that included songs or poems with lyrics about police officers‘ mothers were frequent. The listeners also said the oinking sometimes goes on for minutes. Listeners said that sometimes the man broadcasts rap music, with lyrics that include derogatory things about police officers.
The police needs to look into this matter seriously because occurrence of such incidents even after replacement of police radio systems in 2009 which enabled encrypted channels for police department is shocking enough.
Keep tuned to our news and we will keep you updated about any arrests or progress in this matter.
