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Internet swirls with warnings, debunking of nation-wide protest

7 years 8 months 2 weeks ago Thursday, July 14 2016 Jul 14, 2016 July 14, 2016 1:09 PM July 14, 2016 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - Mixed reports of potentially violent protests around the country and suggestions that the local police computers had been hacked sparked warnings from federal officials.

The Department of Defense warned its employees about protests planned for Friday night and a military base outside St. Louis even posted a warning on Facebook Thursday. The post reported protests over shootings of African Americans in Baton Rouge and Minnesota along with the shooting deaths of police in Dallas spawned a nation-wide protest planned for Friday night.

News outlets have said protests are planned in nearly 40 cities across the country - Baton Rouge is not one, but New Orleans is. The New York Post reported organizers purport to be from the hacktivist organization Anonymous, although, the group denied any plans on Twitter.

Last week, the FBI released an alert to law enforcement about threats made against officers. Tuesday, WBRZ.com was first to report threats made against police in Baton Rouge following a burglary of a pawn shop where weapons were stolen after Alton Sterling was shot and killed by police Tuesday, July 5.

Even though Anonymous tweeted it is not involved in any organized protest this week, a video posted on the internet claims to be produced by the hackers and said Baton Rouge Police computers were compromised and information would be released to expose corruption.

Snopes, a popular internet rumor debunking website, posted the threats are false.

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Follow the publisher of this post on Twitter: @treyschmaltz

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