Organizers of a campaign pushing for accountability in the Department of Defense over the now-rescinded vaccine mandate claim their efforts are being censored.
After the site went live, their efforts have been “attacked,” according to several signors of the letter involved in the campaign. Facebook and Instagram messages are being blocked while the website is persistently threatened by hackers, they said. The Epoch Times has seen screenshots to confirm their allegations.
Mr. Cain was also once part of a cyber protection team with the National Security Agency, tasked with protecting national critical infrastructure. After the release of the letter, he began sharing various news stories and the letter itself on social media.
“The first thing I noticed was the increased number of trolls that were clearly bots,” he said. “Multiple [social media] accounts were being attacked.” Before he shared the letter, this had not occurred on any of his social media platforms.
A day later, once the website was available to the public, a cyberattack occurred, he said. “There was a Denial of Service [DOS] attack, which by the speed that it occurred, is indicative of somebody with some significant resources to make it happen,” he said.
The Epoch Times has confirmed with the person who set up the website, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, that there has been “website defacement and attempts to create a denial of service state through resource-exhaustion attacks.”
“I have some concerns that it might even be people in our own government,” said Mr. Cain. “In my experience, seeing this tactic happen so quickly usually indicates a nation-state type tactic,” he said.
Another letter signer, retired Army veteran Sam Shoemate, also noticed attempts to take down news of the letter.
“On social media, we saw a coordinated effort overnight to remove posts with anything to do with the letter itself or militaryaccountability.com,” he said.
“Everything we’re trying to post about the letter has been slapped with an anti-spam message,” said Mr. Shoemate. “I’ve spoken to dozens of other people, and we all agree that this is very much a coordinated effort to silence us.”
For many people trying to access militaryaccountability.com, he said “the site is now being labeled as a potentially harmful website,” he said. The Epoch Times has seen screenshots supporting this.
Mr. Shoemate, like Mr. Cain, expressed concern with the the speed at which the cyberattacks were occurring.
“The website was under attack within six hours of going live,” he said.
“What this is telling us is that sharing anything about accountability for military leaders ... is completely off limits,” he added.
But Mr. Shoemate was undeterred by the apparent effort to silence them.
“We’ll keep exposing the truth and we have no intention of backing down from their attacks against us,” he said.
Over 15,000 people have signed the petition since Tuesday, and any problems affecting the website are being addressed as they arise, organizers said.
The Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Department of Justice didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.
The Epoch Times has also reached out to the relevant social media companies for comment.
