Inopportune raid

A spokesman for Germany's Pirate Party said Friday that authorities had confiscated and disconnected its servers, in effect crippling the party two days ahead of state elections in Bremen.

A police spokesman said the raid was in connection with a French investigation surrounding a cyberattack against the electricity company Electricite de France last month.

The prosecutor's office in Darmstadt confirmed the action on Friday, saying it had confiscated a "number" of servers but that it couldn't release any further information because it wasn't "in charge of the investigation."

The co-founder of the Pirate Party, Bernd Schlömer, rejected the allegations of cyberattacks and said his organization had been the victim of "illegally coordinated activities" by the hacker organization Anonymous.

Serious blow

Schlömer went on to say that the police raid came at an inopportune time for his party, which was in the middle of its campaign for elections in the northern city-state Bremen.

"The extent of the damage that will be caused by this is enormous," Schlömer said Friday, adding that the party's campaign was "ruined because our entire work and means of communication runs over the Internet."

Schlömer stated the police raid was "unconstitutional" and claimed that his party would consider taking legal action against the police for carrying out the raid ahead of the election.

The party, Germany's sixth largest, also warned that supporting groups could stage cyberattacks in revenge of the raid.

On Friday, the website for Germany's Federal Police Agency, bka.de, was temporarily unavailable due to a flood of hits.

"We distance ourselves from such attacks," Schlömer said.

Author: Gabriel Borrud (dapd, AFP)
Editor: Martin Kuebler