February 6, 2011

This is an interesting piece of news today that is both strange and unverified so you’ll have to take it at the normal face value of news stories in the Kingdom. Jordan’s largest e-newspaper, AmmonNews, is claiming that it was essentially hacked by “unknown sources” last night after it published a statement of demands made by prominent Jordanians and addressed to HM King Abdullah. The statement is published on other news websites in full but it seems Ammon’s had theirs tampered with without their knowledge. Their editorial statement today rejected attempts by any party to hinder its right to free speech and reaffirms their commitment to our “democratic kingdom that has a high ceiling of freedoms [that] reaches the sky under the direction of HM King Abdullah.”

Ammon seem to be purposefully ambiguous, which makes understanding the attack on their site difficult to decipher. They seem to have removed the original article all together. In my opinion, it contains nothing new or radical, and definitely nothing that we haven’t heard before, especially in the past three years, so I don’t know why anyone would have a problem with it being articulated now, unless timing, with regards to events in Tunisia, Egypt and at home, has become a factor for political sensitivity. Now whether this was a genuine attack by authorities, by fervent technologically capable citizens, or simply a sensationalist attempt by Ammon itself, is unknown at the moment, but I do hope it not the former. For it was the authorities then they are making the same mistakes over and over again - failing to recognize how utterly stupid it is to try and make any attempts to censor anything online. If anything, they’ve just added fuel to the fire. That statement will likely be passed around like a virtual game of hot potato.

Welcome to new world order.

UPDATE:

It seems another alleged attempt has been made on the site. A cryptic message left on a blank screen that has replaced the site’s homepage earlier this afternoon. About three minutes after I took the first screen shot, the second message was added. This may be an editorial decision to shut down the site due to some attack - or, this may be an attempt on Ammon’s part to sensationalize the event.

www.black-iris.com