As outcry grows in response to a series of undercover videos revealing Planned Parenthood (PP) employees appearing to engage in selling organs and tissues from aborted babies for profit, the abortion provider claimed that “extremists” had hacked their website.
As Breitbart News reported, PP claimed that it had been hacked on Sunday evening.
The hacking followed several weeks of extremely negative press for PP in response to videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). So far, three videos have been released (See here, here, and here for Breitbart News’ coverage), and more are promised soon.
At least one other video is known to exist and has been provided to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, where it is the subject of an investigation. Efforts to defund PP of taxpayer dollars — the group reportedly receives more than $500 million each year in federal funding — have been renewed in Congress.
PP initially responded by claiming that the videos were edited in a misleading way, but CMP had also posted hours of unedited raw video with each of their releases. The abortion provider also tried denying the content of the videos, claiming that the interpretations are unfair, but each subsequent video has ended up refuting the defenses PP offered for the one before it. Within the past few days, PP hired a high-powered public relations firm, SKDKnickerbocker, well-known for its work on behalf of liberal causes and close ties to the Obama administration. PP’s latest moves include having SKDK pressure media outlets not to cover the story and filing lawsuits to block future releases.
Unlike most other website hacking events that have made the news, PP’s website was not altered to display any message from the alleged hackers. Nor was it otherwise vandalized. The website that first reported the alleged hacking, The Daily Dot, noted that the hackers were unable to deface PP’s website or access its Twitter account, but that they claimed to have accessed emails and other databases.
Intriguingly, while PP’s website does not show any negative changes from the alleged hackers, it does display a message that many critics are challenging is a public relations stunt. Even if PP was legitimately targeted by hackers over the weekend, there are a number of indicators that at this point, their website issues have been deliberately triggered.
As of Wednesday evening, visitors to www.PlannedParenthood.org would find a nearly empty site with text stating that: “We apologize, but our website is not available because of an extremist attack. 200,000 people a day are now being blocked from information and care by this attack.” The message reflects one of the group’s favorite strategies: to shield the details of their abortion services behind claims that they are simply providing “women’s health” or “reproductive services.”
Screenshot of PlannedParenthood.org homepage on July 29, 2015.
Below the text, a link that says “LEARN MORE,” which directs to Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s Facebook page. That Facebook page implores the reader to “help PP fight back,” by — no surprise here — making a donation. The donation page says:
Planned Parenthood has been the target of hackers seeking to intimidate and silence us. Hundreds of thousands of patients who rely on plannedparenthood.org for health information and services have been denied access.The attacks on Planned Parenthood are an attempt to cut people off from care, plain and simple. We can’t let that happen, and we won’t. Please chip in what you can to help make sure patients can get the care they need — and ensure that Planned Parenthood can’t be silenced.
Screenshot from Planned Parenthood Action’s donation page (click to enlarge).
Several sharp-eyed Twitter users noted some key quirks in PP’s website that give credence to the theory that this is a PR stunt. As digital media consultant Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) observed, not only did PP maintain control of the homepage of their website so as to put up their sympathetic message, they also had the ability and the time to tweak the font and alignment.
Looking up the source code for the website (accessible by right-clicking the website and choosing “View page source“), PP’s programmers named the landing page “Campaigns,” and identified the page as “Site Down Tempalte,” presumably a misspelling of “template.”
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