The hacktivist collective Anonymous are staging a distributed denial of service attack on the UK Government’s Home Office, the Prime Minister’s Number 10 and the Ministry of Justice web sites. The attacks began on the evening of Saturday 7 April and were claimed as the work of Anonymous in three tweets (1, 2, 3) by @YourAnonNews, the first of which read “TANGO DOWN – http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ (via @AnonymouSpoon) For your draconian surveillance proposals! Told you to #ExpectUs! #ANONYMOUS #AnonUK”.

The proposals in question are a set of monitoring proposals which would require ISPs in the UK to not only record information on all internet connections, phone calls, text and emails, made by UK users but also allow the authorities acess, without warrant, to real-time feeds of that information. UK newspapers were briefed on the plan by government sources at the start of April. The proposals are expected to be part of a bill due to be included in the Queen’s Speech this month; the UK government has been defending its plans, despite having criticised the previous administration for proposing similar legislation.

Later messages from @YourAnonNews also cited “for continued derogation of civil liberties”. It appears, according to a Sky News report, that the Home Office was aware of a potential threat to the sites and had “put all potential measures in place” but was also said it was prepared for a successful attack.   Update: (23:20) It appears that number10.gov.uk and justice.gov.uk have already recovered from the DDoS attacks and are responding normally. The Home Office site is still not reachable.