back to article Shock jock blames Britain for hack attack

Controversial shock jock Michael Savage was hit by a hacking attack last weekend that forced his site offline for around an hour on Saturday. Savage, who has threatened to sue former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for defamation over an order banning him from entering the UK, suggests Britain might be to blame for orchestrating …

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  1. lukewarmdog

    Stoopid

    The real shock is he's still paid to talk.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    If the US...

    Care to give up their Navy (which was founded by a Scotsman after all..), I'll happily take an aircraft carrier off their hands!

    Anyway, back to the article.. he probably organised the hack himself to get some popularity with the US population!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    He criticised the release?

    Well it wasn't the Brits then, the only people who didn't manage to predict the events that have unfolded were the bloody poli's, everyone else figured out what would happen when you sent a terrorist back to a terrorist supporting country. Listening to the voters my ass.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh

    What have the Scots ever done for us

  5. Dave 64 Silver badge
    Headmaster

    pedantry: TV

    While it's true that a scot (John Logie Baird) invented *a* television system, his system went head-to-head with one from distinctly non-Scottish Marconi and lost the battle. What we know as TV now has little, if anything, in common with what was developed by JLB.

    There was an interesting segment on QI (probably being re-run on Dave right now - if it isn't wait until Top Gear's finished and then it'll be on) listing all the supposedly invented in Scotland things which actually originate from elsewhere.

  6. Baying Lynch Mob
    Thumb Up

    Once more unto the breach

    Well done, fellow Brits! I'd have expected it to be quite difficult to orchestrate an attack on a single site by an entire nation, especially for those of us who don't even have internet access, but we appear to have pulled it off.

    What shall we do next?

  7. Vincent Ballard
    FAIL

    Post hoc ergo propter hoc

    Of course it's possible that it was "the Brits". It's also possible that he did it himself. When we get onto what's probable, though, the only thing which I think we can say to be probable is that he's accusing the British in order to garner publicity.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Scotland?

    Isebt that that northern province in England?

  9. TeeCee Gold badge
    Black Helicopters

    I really don't understand this.

    Why the f*** are the US up in arms about anyway? If they hadn't leaned so heavily on the Scots to make sure that the Palestinians and Iran (wot done it) were kept out of the frame and ensure that Libya (wot didn't) was fingered, Al-Megrahi would never have been convicted in the first place.

    He had to drop his appeal to be released (no compassionate release while court proceedings are pending), so this has neatly prevented any inconvenient exposure of their complicity in the stitch-up.

    I'd have thought that they'd have been bloody delighted.

  10. Tony S
    Megaphone

    See you Pal!

    Fockin bampot - gonna gis you a right weltin'. (Puit the heid on 'im as well. G'wan, banjo the bas. )

    Mebbe send the Smeato round to talk to yer muither an gie her a malkie.

  11. Graham Butler

    That confused me...

    Never heard of the guy, so the title "shock jock" implied a pissed off Scotsman. The ban on entering the UK was particularly perplexing.

  12. John G Imrie

    Fredom of information?

    "Why on the day of the worldwide furor over the release of the Lockerbie bomber by Gordon Brown would Michael Savage's website be hacked"

    Gordon Brown had nothing to do with it, allegedly. Or does he know something we don't?

  13. eJ2095

    Me Thinks

    We Should get Rab C Nessbit as a spokes person

  14. Dan Howarth
    Alien

    Does anyone care?

    Other than being largely unknown in the UK, his question is still valid. Why would anyone attack his site on that day? These are my suggestions;

    1) Whoever it was typo'd the site they really wanted.

    2) Whoever did this was bored.

    3) His site wasn't attacked by the hacking and malware capital of the world, Great Britain (this is sarcasm)

    The outcome of these theorem has numbers in the many;

    1) No-one cares.

    This is the end of the lecture. Please help yourselves to coffee in the reception area.

    Thank you.

  15. Paul Charters

    Well...

    ...if he's suing Wacky-J for defamation, couldn't we ALL countersue him for the same thing?

    I don't even know who he is, but I know I'm included in the term 'Brits'.

  16. MnM
    Thumb Up

    Al-Aqsa Light Brigade

    Yep, it was us

    MnM

    Supreme Leader

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    lol @ Americans

    I love how Americans are getting upset over Megrahi.

    This is the same America that gave refuge to IRA terrorists guilty of murdering civilians whilst also allowing their nation to act as a funding base for such acts.

    The same America that shot down a civilian airliner in 1988 killing 290 civilians without a single American being convicted of the atrocity.

    Remember, it's only terrorism when it's not America murdering the civilians.

    The fact Savage can't even get the person responsible for his release right and seemingly can't tell the difference between England and Scotland is in itself quite amusing.

    The best thing about the whole event is that America has been ignored by everyone - England, Scotland, Libya have all ignored America's attempts to force people to do what they want, it's an interesting sign of an increasingly less relevant America on the world stage.

  18. Old Painless
    Big Brother

    he should think himslf lucky...

    I'm pretty sure HMG wouldn't really be up to tinkering with this no marks interweb, but I hear their "accident arrangers" are quite sharp - and probably cheaper too.I wonder if he has lots of pointy sports equipment?

  19. northern monkey
    FAIL

    Where's my remote... it's time for fox news.

    He seems to be avoiding the careful distinction between Scotland and the UK, which I've noticed the more sane American media outlets seem to have taken great care to highlight during this issue.

    Unfortunately they're probably only bought by the Americans who are already aware that Scotland has its own legal system, is a different country and in many respects is its own political jurisdiction. The rest think Tony Blair is the prime minister of England, of which Scotland is a county and Wales is a town and Northern Ireland is a little island somewhere off the north coast of London.

    (calm down, if you're on here you're probably not one of the ones to which I'm referring).

  20. dervheid
    Megaphone

    Me Thinks that you don't...

    think.

    Or know any better.

    Only ONE 's' in Nesbit, by the way.

    Just been to the site. Get it right up them. (the US that is).

    Americans need to take a LONG, HARD look at their own values (promotions and medals all round on the Vincennes, torture of SUSPECTED terrorists et al) before they criticise ANYONE else!

    For my own opinion, I believe that releasing Megrahi to die amongst his ain folk was, morally, the right thing to do. Just a shame that the Lybian authorities saw fit to slap us in the face, give us the bird, piss on us from a great height etc. by treating him like a fuckin hero. He WAS convicted, after all. As to whether or not that conviction was sound, we may never know for sure. Someone, somewhere DOES know though. And if there IS any 'fresh' evidence to be heard, as may have been at his aborted appeal, then that 'evidence' should be brought to light.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Savage, ya fuckin' ersehole...

    The SNP government are even less likely to listen to what Gordon Brown says as I am to listen to anything from a shit-thick septic bellend like you.

  22. Gerard Krupa

    Standard Policy

    Isn't this just standard policy for any right-winger in the US? Take a situation, twist it around or simply just make shit up in order to prove your point when reality doesn't agree with you.

    Exhibit A m'lud: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTPsFIsxM3w&feature=response_watch

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Surely this counts..

    ...as a suitable reason to section him, Paraniod delusions?

    It will more than likely turn out he forgot to renew his domain registration and ti was taken offline.

    Still have no idea why the yanks are so upset, ooo silly me the IRA were "freedom fighters" not terrorists.

    The yanks funded the IRA, The IRA worked with the PLO & the Libyans, the Libyans killed Americans..

    So in effect they funded their own killers, but hey lets gloss over that little fuck up in history.

    (oh lets not forget who funded the Taliban while we are at it).

    http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/04/ira_plo_history_cooperation.html

    http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id=637

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In the words of Windsor Davies

    as BSM Williams, who being neither Scottish nor English can act as an impartial commentator:

    "Oh dear, how sad, never mind"

    Loved boycottscotland.co.uk really sends up boycottscotland.com a treat.

    By the way, if you have the inclination, read http://www.boycottscotland.com/condemnation.html

    and then send them an email they can print (cowards)

  25. Richard 102
    Coat

    @lol @ Americans

    "I love how Americans are getting upset over Megrahi."

    I love how the rest of the world keeps telling us what to do.

    To be honest, as a taxpaying agnostic libertarian white male American, I'm telling the rest of the world to go away and solve your own damn problems, to hell with you. Of course, the last time we did that, it lead to World War II.

    Mine's the one with a copy of P.J. O'Rourke's article "Among the Euroweenies" in the pocket.

  26. Daniel 1

    Move aside, Russian secret service

    We'll show you how to knock an unknown journalist's blog out of action - and we'll do it all without affecting Facebook or Twitter, while we're at it! We have an army of trained hoodies in a bunker in Possilpark, and another in HamiltonHil, dedicated to silencing neocon nincompoops like this one. So all you people who've been saying bad things about our health service, just watch it: we're coming for you. Half our hoodies wouldn't have been born, if it wasn't for our National Health Service ('tis true, the other half wouldn't have been born if there'd been proper access to contraception, but that's by-the-by).

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lets attack scotland

    And hope no one notices we've been torturing people, in that embarrassing report by the Inspector General of the CIA.

    What's a bit of compassion to a terminally ill Lybian, compared to the sanctioned torture of suspects.

    Guys, we are democracies, we are supposed to be better than this.

  28. Richard IV
    Black Helicopters

    He shouldn't get so het up.

    We seem to be using his country as a penal colony for hackers at the minute :o

  29. Elmer Phud
    Happy

    Link

    Thanks for the link to 'Boycott Scotland'. Have updated my Faceache page to help with the cause.

    Will the Merkins please be so kind to remove products from our shores to punish us. The passing of McD, KFC and Friends will be such a sad affair.

  30. Spleen
    Grenade

    @TeeCee

    Except that the furore means that pretty much everyone who doesn't get their news from, well, Mike Weiner now knows that the bloke didn't do it, whereas before it was only the sad old loonies who read obscure conspiracy theory journals, like Private Eye.

    The mainstream news coverage has all but stopped referring to him as the bomber without qualification (which is near unheard of for someone who's been convicted in a Western court), and Washington and London's apologists are reduced to writing whiny articles saying things like "UK and US intelligence agencies are unanimous in the belief that he did it", which nowadays (post-Iraq and what have you) is pretty much all the proof you need of the opposite.

    The fact that the stitch up began with a classic case of us needing to be at war with Eastasia rather than Eurasia only compounds the problem. There isn't really a single ugly facet of geopolitics - lying, doublethink, hysterical drama, horsetrading with innocent lives, justice perverted to service politics rather than truth, "diplomacy" and "realpolitik" turning out to mean cosying up with one bunch of scum against another bunch of scum - that hasn't been thrown into the spotlight by this whole thing. And this is a game that, in terms of the money involved and the people with a stake in it, makes the Premier League look like the South Tiverton Tiddlywinks Championship (junior division). "Why are we playing this?" is not really a question they need asked.

  31. Cazzo Enorme

    @Richard 102

    Ah, the old chestnut about the Yanks saving the Brits in WWII. In think you'll find that all you did was speed up the inevitable - a Soviet defeat of Hitler. Which is why there were no US troops fighting in Berlin. Your lot would have also faced a far harder struggle against the Japanese in the Far East without the Brits and Aussies, but that's always conveniently forgotten isn't it?

    As for solving their own problems, that's exactly what the Scots have done. They had a prisoner who was convicted in a dodgy show trial by a previous regime and with the connivance of the US government. So they gave him back to Libya. Saved face for your lot and the British government by stopping his appeal (which was at last going to hear some of the evidence that wasn't allowed before).

    Anyone with more than a passing awareness of the Lockerbie bombing knows it is far more likely that Iran was the guilty party, acting in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet by the US navy.

  32. OffBeatMammal
    Coat

    who?

    I realise that as I live in the US of A I'm probably tarred with the same brush as the rest of the Septics but.... who is this Michael Savage? Glad to say that I've never heard of him. Seems like banning the man has created a bit of a Streisand Effect.

    Oh, and didn't Mr Farnsworth invest the telly box (as referenced in both Futurama and Warehouse 13 - fine educational programmes both)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth

    Is that a coat, or a giant paper aeroplane?

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC 12:42

    Maybe the US should follow the lead of the UK. Oh wait, hang on...

    http://www.anniemachon.com/annie_machon/Spies_Lies_and_Whistleblowers.html

  34. Robert Ramsay
    Thumb Down

    Just ignore him.

    Because you don't need to answer a barking dog.

  35. Nick G
    Pint

    Well Done!

    I, for one, am pleased that an IT project in this country has been co-ordinated to such an extent & brought about a successful conclusion!

    Drinks all round chaps!

    /sarcasm

  36. Timothy J. Schutte
    Linux

    He's a Nutter

    As you people say over there, Savage is a nutter. Ignore him. We do!

  37. Sarah Davis
    FAIL

    This is not news,.. it's banal tedium

    'Shock Jock' is a term used to describe someone who is petty, bitter, and so dumb they cannot do any work requiring any degree of intelligence. This knob probably failed at everything before finally falling on his feet and being offered a job as the lowest form of DJ where nothing he plays or says actually matters, and the more stupid and outragous he is the better. It's a job anyone over the age of 10 can do, and costs almost nothing in production costs.

    So this morons website got hacked !!! Lets face it, he prob had no protection whatsoever (as his 30 day Norton trial had run out and he didn't understand the reminders) - it was probably and 'apprentice' or 'junior' hacker in training (in the same way young boys burn ants with magnifying glasses during the summer).

    So,... no harm done, and no-one of any consequence gives a crap !! How the fuck is this news?

  38. Steven Jones

    @Richard 102

    "To be honest, as a taxpaying agnostic libertarian white male American, I'm telling the rest of the world to go away and solve your own damn problems, to hell with you. Of course, the last time we did that, it lead to World War II."

    Before the US reintroduce the policy of isolation that it held between the two World Wars, the country will need to solve its little problem of dependency on middle eastern Oil (not that the rest of the western world don't have this issue too of course). As it happens, this particular issue had little to do with Europe and, like many things these days, everything to do with middle eastern politics. Given US interests and involvement with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Israel and Afghanistan (to name but a few), then retreating back to continental USA isn't really going to happen.

    Remember it was a US airliner that was targeted, nominally by Libyans, although many point the finger back at Iran. It has to be remembered that in July 1988 the U.S. Navy's cruiser USS Vincennes somehow mistook an an Iran Air Airbus for a fighter-bomber and shot it down with the loss of 290 lives, only 4 months before Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed. It's not the work of a conspiracy theorists to suspect that, at the very least, the latter event was at least in part retaliation for the former, even if it wasn't directly perpetrated by the Iranian government.

    I'm afraid pinning the Pan AM bombing down as a European issue is missing the point. This was aimed primarily at the US and is heavily connected with US interests in the middle east.

  39. Graham Marsden
    FAIL

    Dear Michael Savage...

    ... sorry, who are you again?

    Just because Wacky Jacqui got her panties in a twist, why should we give a damn about you?

    Yours Sincerely,

    The people of Britain.

  40. cybersaur 1
    IT Angle

    WorldNutDaily? Really?

    WorldNutDaily doesn't "report" anything. It's a fundamentalist, right wing disinformation site. This is the main disinformation source of the "birthers" here in Jesusland. Everything posted on WorldNutDaily should be considered false until proven otherwise by legitimate sources of information.

    Why would El Reg reference anything posted on WorldNutDaily for any purposes other than the rich mockery they so deserve?

  41. Tom 106

    ouch

    It begs the question, why a UK home secretary bans this Character from the UK for his waffle, yet the government that the x-home secretary belonged too, continues to allow the likes of the BNP to exist.

  42. kain preacher

    Of course it was a brit

    Because most Americans have noit heard of Savage. Even O Reily does not like savage . I never heard about savage being banned from the UK in the main stream media.

  43. gollux
    Black Helicopters

    We also should...

    give back the railroads. They were built with Scottish engineers and Irish shovels for the most part. And then left to rot by US shareholders Though on the left coast, the Chinese expended quite a bit of blood sweat and tears and probably could improve the system if they took it back.

    While you're at it, can you DDOS Lush Rimbot, Insean Hannity and DinkyBill O'reilly? Lush's sounding like he's back on the Oxycontin and could do with a break. I'm pretty fed up to the gills with all the robots over here that need their daily fix of suck jock and political wingnut verbal diarrhea. They're all either in a red faced high blood pressure rant or blue from not taking time to take a breath over here.

    Seriously, the problem with his website more likely was due to his own website administrators incompetence. Wouldn't have been the first time a right leaning website managed to self-censor and then the goofballs running it decided through incompetence, malice or CYA to blame it on some outside entity when they either had poor security allowing just any old hacker to backdoor it or flatly brought it down themselves.

  44. Dave 38
    Coat

    orly?

    I did a fart that sounded vaguely more interesting than anything this felcher has to say...

    move along.

  45. Blain Hamon
    Welcome

    @ OffBeatMammal

    Yes, be glad to say you've never heard of him, he's yet another rabid right-wing shock jock troll. He's part of the reason why it's a good idea to claim being from Canada if you want better treatment abroad.

  46. cphi
    Pint

    don't know what you're missing

    Listening to the Savage Nation was one of the highpoints of my commute home in the states. Like a mini Nuremberg rally every night. Brits don't know what they're missing...

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    michael savage aka mr. self promotion

    michael savage is all about self promotion. this man can't live without attention. he says the most preposterous things in order to create PR which will then have ignorant listeners tune in and that would mean more sponsors.

    Examples of his preposterous behavor:

    In June 2008, Savage claimed that the increasing rate of autism diagnoses was the result of "a racket" designed to get disability payments for "poorer families who have found a new way to be parasites on the government."

    Savage was quoted as saying Muslims "need deportation", and that adherents of Islam would do well to “take your religion and shove it up your behind” because "I’m sick of you."

    On April 17, 2006, he said of Muslims "They say, "Oh, there's a billion of them." "So, kill 100 million of them, then there'll be 900 million of them." I mean, would you rather die — would you rather us die than them?"

    I thought it was pretty reasonable when the UK would not give him a visa to visit. I guess we here in the US are stuck with him and all his talking (blah blah)

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Forget hacking the site.

    It would be far more fitting if we each sent him a tinfoil hat.

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: michael savage aka mr. self promotion

    It seems to me that since 911 the media is pandering to these people, the more bile and hatred they spout the more airtime they get.

    I totally believe in freedom of speech even when it is truly reprehensible, but I don't understand why people like savage and Ann Coulter seem to get such exposure.

    She seems to be on Fox news every 5 minutes.

    Don't the people who help promote these idea realise that they aren't being patriotic.

    They aren't even supporting freedom of speech. there exploiting it.

    Worst of all they are helping portray the false notion that America is a divided, hate filled, war mongering country.

    Then the same people will get all high and mighty at those abroad who distrust America and its citizens.

    I just wish that our rational American friends had a chance to have their say without being labelled as some sort of "liberal" anti-American traitor.

    Paris: Would love to speak her mind. If only she had one.

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Extra! Extra!

    Self-Important Pompous Ass Blames Entire Country For Minor Inconvenience.

    Country Reported To Be Unconcerned.

    That is all.

  51. SteveMD

    Who is this bloke?

    I think this character is over-estimating his own importance in the world. I guarantee the vast majority of Brits won't have any idea who he is. He can't even get the facts right, it was not Brown who made the decision, because it was not his to make. Gordon Brown cannot interfere in any way with this and quite right to.

    While I feel for those who lost family in the bombing, this release does not give succour to terrorists and the Lybians are not welcoming him as a terrorist hero. They actually denounced the bombing. As is so often the case with most countries we do not trust foreign justice systems, I'm sure there have been cases of Americans convicted in other countries who have had campaigns to bring them home? Well that is what is going on here, the popular opinion in Lybia is that he is innocent and did not commit these atrocities. So let's get thing right and in proportion before we mouth off about appeasing terrorists. Whatever you may think of the decision in terms of justice, since Megrahi himself and his countrymen denounce the bombing, that is clearly not the case.

    To this "shock jock", - grow up.

  52. Alex 32
    Unhappy

    no No NO!

    "Wacky Jacqui got her panties in a twist"

    ...thanks.. that will haunt me now for quite sometime...

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