City IT workers brace for anarchist attack
G20 protest threatens critical systems
Posted in Management, 26th March 2009 15:35 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
IT workers at City institutions have been told they must come to work on April 1 and 2, when thousands of protestors are expected in the Square Mile to mark the G20 meeting of leaders in London.
Authorities fear the protests will turn violent, and many City workers have been ordered to stay at home. But staff maintaining the critical infrastructure behind the London Stock Exchange (LSE) have been told they must come to work.
Earlier this week, the LSE IT department received a request from police to organise an email alert to staff working in two buildings deemed vulnerable to protestors, sources said. The email told LSE IT and other staff who are expected to come to work to dress casually rather than in their usual suit, to avoid identifying themselves as a target for anti-banking activists.
One LSE staffer said: "It's going to be crazy - they'll be right outside our door."
A specific attack on the LSE has been organised on activist site Indymedia UK. "Disrupt the traders whose financial egomania perpetuates global injustice: let's shutdown trading for the day. Meet outside the London Stock Exchange," the call to action says.
According to our insider, backroom workers at the LSE fear being targeted as traders, but none plan to stay away.
Police will deploy thousands of extra officers in the City in response to the protests. The G20 leaders are meeting in London to discuss the global recession triggered by irresponsible lending and debt trading by bankers. ®
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
COMMENTS
Gotta Laugh
To the people that can't spot an obvious troll, or attempt at satire, thanks for the laugh!!!
"My wife works there, and without her salary we'd have to take our children out of private school."
Boo.
Freakin.
Hoo.
Anarchist Infultrators
At the last violent city protest (2000 - I think), where security guards prevented protesters from entering buildings by ingeniously locking the doors, the anarchist groups claimed to have a new tactic of infiltrating the banks by getting jobs, and then to open it up from the inside at the next event.
What has happened to these infiltrators? Are they still there, and come Wednesday will reveal to their colleagues : "For the last last 9 years I have been helping to move billions of pounds around the world, but AHA! I am really an anti-globalisation activist and will now let my mates in and trash the office" ? Or have some gone native, found out they had a talent for it and will be watching the event from their corner office?
Should be interesting.
Nice quiet day inside the office, pick a nice vantage point near a window a few floors up and watch the festivities as the rozzers do a Rodney King on the soap dodging dope heads.
Remember to bring popcorn.
BTW...
There's been no trading floor at the LSE since 2004.
Paris, because she knows the difference between a long and a short position.
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