Racist flyers printed at local colleges

By Ana Bottary

abottary@abc6.com

@anabottary

Racist fliers have been showing up in college printers all over New England, including at the University of Rhode Island.
 
"It was discovered I think when people came in to a printer and found it there, and didn’t have any idea of how it had gotten there,"says President of URI David Dooley.
 
Dooley says two printers, Including one in the library, on the URI campus had a racist, anti-Semitic flyer printed to it. Brown University received the same letter on one of its printers. The Anti-defamation league out of Boston is an organization with the goal to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate and bigotry. After receiving calls from dozens of schools, they realized this is a national coordinated effort.
 
"He wrote out a simple code that was able to search out these printers that are connected to the internet and then send out a command so they would print out the one particular flier simultaneously,"says Director Robert Trestan.
 
Trestan tell us a man named Andrew Auernheimer, who considers himself a racist, claimed responsibility for the hack.

"Who at one point was convicted of hacking into the IPADS of AT&T customers. He was sentenced to prison and his conviction was subsequently overturned on a technicality,"says Trestan.

He says as far as Auernheimer facing charges for this hack, Police are investigating, and prosecutors will decide whether this will be considered a criminal offense that he can be charged with.

"This represents a new tactic. Where someone can just disseminate hate material right from their home,"adds Trestan.

Back over at URI President Dooley says they already have fire walls in place on the computers, but are taking steps to improve it.

"Our it network security people will once again be putting up new layers of defense, and new ways of preventing these kinds of attacks."