Elisagate: Anonymous Deny Bomb Threat Allegations

The Finnish cell of the Anonymous collective has formerly denied Finnish media reports suggesting it had issued a bomb threat to the Copyright, Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC).

The alleged bomb threat was originally reported by Finnish news site YLE.fi. Specifically it reported that the CIAPC had formerly requested police investigate a bomb threat from Anonymous on Tuesday. "The anti-piracy group CIAPC (Copyright, Information and Anti-Piracy Centre) on Tuesday asked police to investigate a bomb threat it received via email signed by the hacker group Anonymous," read YLE's report.

YLE went on to clarify that the alleged Anonymous email threatened to plant a bomb in the anti-piracy group's offices to protest a recent Finnish court-order forcing Elisa and Saunalahti to ban access to the Pirate Bay torrent site.

Following YLE's report numerous Anonymous Twitter feeds have tweeted statements clarifying the report is false and that it had not sent a bomb threat. "We deny to have sent a bomb email threat to CIAPC. We won't even comment on such bulls**t. Please RT this as much as You can #elisagate" tweeted Anon_Finland. Following up: "We deny to have sent a bomb email threat to CIAPC. We demand @ylenews to report this statement today & asap: don't piss us off #elisagate."

The news comes just days after Anonymous started its Elisagate campaign. The campaign has seen the collective mount an ongoing series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on both government and censorship supporting sites.

The campaign began on Monday after Elisa, one of Finland's largest internet providers, was ordered to block access to the PirateBay website - a common dumping ground for Anonymous statements and data releases. According to the service provider's press release, it had been ordered to instigate the ban by the local district court in Helsinki. Elisa said it would attempt to overturn the decision in the supreme court.

While the use of DDoS attacks - effectively spamming a site with requests until it becomes overloaded and breaks - is nothing new, the use of a bomb threat would be a marked change in Anonymous members' tactics. Despite never shying away from mounting cyber attacks, many of the collective's members have continually reported themselves - and at times the collective as a whole - as pacifists and do not condone the use of physical violence.

In keeping with this insistence, there are no known cases of any Anon - the name Anonymous members give themselves - issuing a threat like the one contained in YLE's report. What is more likely is that a member of the public has posted a statement in Anonymous' name without the consensus or support of the main body of Anons - leading to a false report that the collective had resorted to violence.