Throughout the pandemic we have seen protests of pretty much every kind, not just in the United States but around the world. However, one of the most recent protests stands out a bit from the rest.
Canadian truckers have banded together in an effort to protest vaccination mandates, and they have been supported through the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo.
The site has reportedly raised approximately $8.7 million in support of the truckers, with donations coming from 92,845 individuals, according to Vice News.
But GiveSendGo was recently hacked and the personal information of donors was leaked online.
GiveSendGo does not require donors to provide their names, allowing individuals to remain anonymous, including the top donor who provided $215,000. Though some chose to submit their information along with their donation, such as American billionaire Thomas Siebel, who donated $90,000.
Amarnath Amarasingam, an extremism researcher, analyzed the leaked data and concluded that 56% of the donations came from U.S. citizens, while only 29% came from Canada. Amarasingam also noted that thousands of donations came from countries outside North America, including the U.K., Australia, and Ireland.
Despite the lopsided difference in number of donations between the U.S. and Canada, Canadians actually accounted for more money than Americans, $4.3 million compared to $3.6 million, according to Amarasingam.
The information included in the leak contains typical stuff like names, email addresses, and locations, but also showed messages that donors had posted alongside their donations.
One individual donated $25 two separate times, which normally wouldn't draw much attention, except for the fact this donor submitted from a U.S. Department of Justice email address. Vice News says it was unable to verify if it was really the named person that sent the donations, but did find that the name matches a current employee of the DOJ, according to their LinkedIn profile.
The individual in question included this note on their second donation:
"Thank you, Truckers! It is working. Others have taken your lead like Australia, New Zealand, UK. I think the reason all these blue states in the USA have stopped the mask mandates is there were rumors that truckers here in the USA were going to start a protest starting in CA to DC, and the local and federal governments did not want that. And it is an election year."
Vice says that it doesn't stop with this one person, either:
"There are also email addresses from people claiming to work for NASA, the U.S. military, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Transportation Security Administration. There's also a donation from someone whose name and email address match those of a senior employee at the Delaware Transit Corporation (DTC)."
While no one has claimed credit for the hack of GiveSendGo, individuals who visited the website following the hack were redirected to GiveSendGone.wtf, where they found this message:
"Attention GiveSendGo grifters and hatriots. You helped fund the January 6th insurrection in the U.S. You helped fund an insurrection in Ottawa. In fact you are committed to fund anything that keeps the raging fire of misinformation going until it burns the world's collective democracies down. On behalf of sane people worldwide who wish to continue living in a democracy, I am now telling you that GiveSendGo itself is now frozen."
In appropriate fashion, the frozen site also had a video from the Disney movie Frozen on it, with messaging directed at the truckers. Mikael Thalen, a tech staff writer for The Daily Dot, shared part of the video on Twitter:
The Superior Court of Justice in Ontario granted a restraining order against GiveSendGo, demanding that protesters' funds be frozen. The company has countered, claiming the Canadian government doesn't have jurisdiction over how they manage funds.
See the original story from Vice News for more information.