I know this will shock you but the “re-open America” protests aren’t on the up and up:
Since April 15, protests against coronavirus lockdown measures have been sweeping across various American states. Informally unified under the ‘Reopen America’ slogan, they seek an end to measures intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus. They’ve arguably been flared up by tweets President Donald Trump posted on April 17.
But according to new research from cybersecurity researchers, many of these protests are neither spontaneous nor organic. Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs and researchers at DomainTools have separately analysed web addresses including the word “reopen.” And interestingly, they’ve found that many of these can be linked to domains associated with gun advocacy groups, lobbyists, and other conservative organisations.
Published today, a report from DNS-focused cybersecurity firm DomainTools concludes that over 500 new domains related to the protests have been registered in the past month. Many of them are linked to only a few groups.Today In: AI
By gathering domain names that include the same words, and by analysing the domains for other similarities, DomainTools was able to determine that many of them “redirect to a state-based firearms coalition group.” And according to its senior security researcher, Chad Anderson, these groups tie back to Aaron Dorr, a registered lobbyist for the state of Iowa.
Anderson goes on to explain that the “reopen” websites linked to Aaron Dorr bear various similarities, including the fact that they were built using One Click Politics and WordPress. By looking at one of them, the Iowa Gun Owners website, DomainTools was able to find Dorr’s telephone number.
DomainTools then examined the historical SSL certificates used for each of the firearms advocacy domains, finding Mr. Dorr’s personal domain and also numerous other domains associated with other firearm’s coalitions elsewhere in the US. For Chad Anderson and his colleagues, this “raised the likelihood for us that Mr. Dorr was the one running these campaigns.”
In other words, a batch of the “reopen America” domains are the work of a single gun advocacy network. And something very similar is suggested by recent research published by Brian Krebs.
On April 20, Krebs published an article titled, “Who’s Behind the ‘Reopen’ Domain Surge?” In it, he also reports on running a domain search for any domains registered in the past month with “reopen” in them.
This search brought up a list of around 150 domains. Startlingly, Krebs concludes that “a review of other details about these domains suggests a majority of them are tied to various gun rights groups, state Republican Party organizations, and conservative think tanks, religious and advocacy groups.”
As Krebs explains, “reopenmn.com” redirects to “minnesotagunrights.org,” which is linked to an individual living in Florida. According to Krebs, this same person registered “reopenpa.com,” a site that redirects to the Pennsylvania Firearms Association, and which “urges the state’s residents to contact their governor about easing the COVID-19 restrictions.”
Krebs also finds evidence that “Reopen.pa” is tied to a Facebook page named Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine. It has 68,000 members, and attempted to arrange an “Operation Gridlock” protest at midday on April 20 in Pennsylvania.
He finds other similar links. The domains “reopenoureconomy.com” and “reopensociety.com” are linked to FreedomWorks, a conservative group that has reportedly been holding virtual meetings with members of Congress.
Remember, none of this means that the poeple who are protesting aren’t authentic. They are. They are just people who once followed the same sort of organizing for the Tea party and Gun Rights groups which have now switched to Trump Cult organizing. These have always been the same people. They aren’t “issues based.” After all, they claimed to care deeply about deficits during the Great Recession but sat by idly as Trump spent like a drunken sailor while cutting taxes.
These groups are soldiers in the culture wars, organized around fighting Democrats. Period. The “issues” aren’t the point.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Donald Trump himself is directing this stuff. He seems to have a lot of time on his hands, anyway. And he’s motivated by exactly the same animosity toward his political enemies. The only thing he cares about is beating his opposition. If that takes killing massive numbers of Americans, he’s down.