2 Mar 2001
frontline@rocketmail.com
Frontline: Animal Activists Claim Victory In Online Civil Disobedience

Frontline Information Service - News 3/01/01

Animal Activists Claim Victory
In Online Civil Disobedience

For Immediate Release
February 28th, 2001

ANIMAL ACTIVISTS CLAIM VICTORY IN ONLINE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

(Philadelphia, USA) Animal rights activists from across the world claimed success late Tuesday afternoon after an all day virtual sit-in at the webpage of the investment company Stephen’s Inc of Little Rock Arkansas. Stephen’s Inc was targeted on Tuesday for the being the biggest shareholder and chief financier of the notorious Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), one of the world’s biggest animal testing laboratories, that has been shrouded in scandal after being exposed in 5 undercover investigation showing horrific animal cruelty.

An anonymous group called the Animal Liberation - Tactical Internet Response Network (AL-TIRN) organized the action that saw over a thousand activists activate a floodnet program from their computers that enabled them to ‘flood’ Stephen’s Inc website several times per minute with download requests, thereby slowing down and clogging up the system.

The action was advertised to all its members by the international campaign Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), whose sole aim to closing down HLS. According to a SHAC spokesperson, “no matter where HLS hides their financiers, in a small city in the Southern part of the US like Little Rock Arkansas or on the other side of the world, there are still ways of targeting them. We anticipate this to be only the first action of many to come against Stephen’s Inc.”

Since saving HLS from foreclosure one month ago with a 33 million dollar loan, Stephen’s Inc has been on the receiving end of protests outside all of it’s corporate offices across America and in London, and email and phone blockades.

The SHAC spokesperson asserts, “Stephen’s Inc is the sole reason 500 animals suffer and die everyday inside HLS for more cancerous agrochemicals, food colorings, and washing powders. We hold Stephen’s Inc responsible for these deaths, they are now public enemy number one.”

In the follow-up report issued AL-TIRN it is evident how much of a headache the electronic civil disobedience, a 21st Century version of how Martin Luther King and Gandhi fought injustices of their time according the SHAC, was to Stephen’s Inc. According to the report, by midday Stephen’s Inc. began blocking IPs so participants could not access their website, but was to no relief as Al-TIRN changed the url of the floodnet program to Stephen’s online investment site thereby clogging that up.

In summary of the action AL-TIRN stated, “Over 1300 people from 20+ countries participated in the fourth Virtual Sit-In hosted by the Tactical Internet Response Network. Stephen's Inc.

had several outages of service throughout.” Animal protection activists are already planning future innovative protests against Stephen’s Inc, especially for March 21st as the investment company is holding a major conference in Las Vegas that is predicted to be besieged by activists.

SHAC-USA
P.O. Box 22398
Philadelphia, Pa 19110
shacusa@envirolink.org
1-888-354-2435

SHAC-UK
PO box 381
Cheltenham GL50 1YN
info@shac.u-net.com
0121 632 6460
http://www.shac.net/
-----
AL-TIRN Report:

=-=-=-=-=-=-

Electronic Action Against Huntingdon Life Sciences

Virtual Sit-In at Stephen's Inc. Website ( http://www.stephens.com/)

Tuesday, February 27th, 2001 - 2:30 PM GMT
-----------------------------------------
14:30 GMT +0
TIRN opens virtual sit-in at http://stephens-kills.virtualave.net
-------------------
15:45 GMT +0
Access to stephens.com slows down and participants in the action
start receiving web server messages stating:
HTTP/1.1
Server Too Busy
-------------------
19:16 GMT +0
Stephens.com begin blocking specific IP's, participants in the action
start receiving web server messages stating:
<Access to this server is forbidden from your client
-------------------
20:52 GMT +0
Changed floodnet target url to http://www.stephensaccess.com
Stephens online investment site which allows sit-in particpants
to effectively avoid IP banning at stephens.com
-------------------
21:48 GMT +0
Subject: Notice of account removal
From: abuse@virtualave.net
To: tirn@altavista.com
Reason: The site does not promote a business and the site is
flooding other isps.
It is for the above reason that we have been forced to
schedule the removal of your account nrit from our servers.
User Name: nrit
Site URL: stephens-kills.virtualave.net
-------------------
21:50 GMT +0
Site closed by host.
[403] Error - Access Forbidden
-------------------
8 hours 20 minutes later....
Over 1300 people from 20+ countries participated in the
fourth Virtual Sit-In hosted by the Tactical Internet Response
Network.

Stephens Inc. had several outages of service throughtout Thank you for particpating in the fourth animal liberation Electronic

Civil Disobedience action.
-------------------
Aftermath
Visitors to https://www.stephens.com received the following warning:
403.6 IP Address rejected
Warning
All access to this server is logged.
Computer IP addresses of participants of denial of service
(DOS) attacks and other
"flood" attacks are forwarded to the appropriate authorities.
-------------------

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