From Nick Griffin MEP BNP
Dear Friend and Colleague,
This letter was first dispatched Friday evening, but was sabotaged along with the BNP website by another cyber-terrorist attack. Our Webmaster Simon Bennett reports to me that we have now set up an additional and permanent server that provides protection against these sorts of web attacks - called "DDos attacks".
It has to be considered that the likes of Twitter, Facebook and even Microsoft are virtually defenceless against these kinds of attacks, so we simply have to accept that these attacks will happen once in a while. We should be more concerned if they were not attacking us - we must be hitting a nerve!
The website has been off-line for a significantly longer period this time, but this has been a conscious decision to keep it off-line until such time as we have the new server in place and all the data transferred to it. We have had to transfer around 300 gigabytes of data, which is not a quick operation, but it will have been worth the down-time in the long run.
The difference between this and the last attack was that we were literally hours away from a national TV broadcast and had to act fast and put temporary measures in place just to get the website back on-line as soon as humanly possible. It is fortunate that this attack came at a quiet period and when many members were at the RWB Festival. It was due to this that Webmaster Simon Bennett took the decision to keep the site off-line until such time as we were fully protected to the best of our ability with the resources immediately available.
Thanks to the indefatigable efforts of our Webmaster Simon Bennett the BNP website is now online once again - my thanks to Simon for his patience, skill and determination to keep Europe's most popular political website functioning and now with better protection.
I wanted to write to you as soon as I could to thank you personally for putting such great trust in our Party, and in me, by helping us to win seats in the European Parliament.
On behalf of myself and Andrew Brons MEP, let me assure you that we will not let you down; we will be your voice in the belly of the Euro beast, speaking out for British freedom.
As you know we have all worked hard for many years to gain this success, many think our troubles are over now we have made such a huge political breakthrough. Not so! With political success come new challenges and obstacles (as the cyber-terrorist attacks on our website demonstrate), and the Party as a whole is suffering acute financial pressure.
Andrew and I will of course be giving the promised 10% of our salaries (pre-tax) to good causes in our constituencies, but the other Euro monies, €17k for staff and €4k for offices per month is locked down legally and can only be used for parliamentary work. Any breach of this and we could be de-registered - in effect, the BNP would be banned.
As you know, our affairs, more than any other party, will be scrutinised to death. That's why we have employed an independent professional accountant to act as 'Paying Agent' for us. Unfortunately many in the party don't understand the stringent rules on European finances and wrongly think that the party is now financially well off!
This is not only incorrect but it has led to the central Party now being under incredible pressure. In short, we are cash strapped. We threw everything we had at the Election Campaign, and why not, we won didn't we! But our success has unleashed the furies of hell against us, now our very existence is being challenged, and it is costing us dear!
.