Zoom
Monday night’s virtual Board of Alders meeting.
A hacker briefly took over Monday night’s virtual Board of Alders public meeting with a graphic child pornography video, prompting screams of “What the hell is going on in this world!” and encouragement from others not to let trolls destroy local democracy.
That “Zoom bombing” took place during the latest regular meeting of the full Board of Alders.
Since City Hall remains indefinitely closed to the public because of the state of emergency around the Covid-19 pandemic, the meeting took place entirely online via the Zoom teleconferencing app.
The online hacker attack took place just as alders were beginning their Democratic Party public information caucus at around 6:45 p.m. It appeared to represent the first time that a local public meeting had been cyber-attacked in such a fashion since all public legislating moved online soon after the start of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Before an audience of well over 200 people who had signed in to listen and watch the virtual meeting, Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow asked his colleagues on the board if they had any questions about the proposed legislation that they would be voting on later in the night.
Soon thereafter, the teleconferencing app directed the attention of everyone who was logged in to one attendee, who played a short video depicting the sexual assault of a child.
At first, alders thought that someone from the public had simply forgotten to mute themselves when they entered the meeting.
Then they realized what was going on, that a hacker had intruded and was disrupting the meeting with something truly grotesque.
“What is going on?!” shouted Dwight Alder Frank Douglass. “What the hell is going on in this world?!”
The meeting’s host, the city’s Office of Legislative Services, was able to kick the hacker out within about 10 seconds of the video’s start.
The damage had been done.
“This is the devil working overtime,” Douglass said.
West Rock/West Hills Alder Honda Smith asked what the group could do to try to catch the person assaulting the child in the video.
Is there any way to impose a password on these meetings? asked Beaver Hills Alder Jill Marks. The meetings are password free, and require attendees to be “let in” by the Office of Legislative Services.
Furlow urged his colleagues to treat this like a disruption that might happen in the physical Aldermanic Chambers. The alders needed to put an end to it and move on with business.
The board could not impose a password on the meeting, Furlow explained, because this was a public meeting.
“Treat it like a disruption in the chambers,” he said.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand wrote in the text chat tool on Zoom, “Let us stay calm, colleagues.”
“We’ll deal with these things as we deal with things in the chambers,” Furlow repeated.
He said that the meeting was now safe, because once an attendee has been kicked out of a meeting, that attendee can’t come back in for at least a day.
“We won’t let people derail our democratic process,” Marchand wrote.