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Source: ONE News
The Department of Internal Affairs website has been temporarily offline after a threat from a group of hackers.
The DIA's homepage and the Civil Defence website are among those experiencing problems.
A group calling itself Anonymous posted a video on Youtube last month threatening to target the department over claims it is censoring use of the internet in New Zealand.
"Internet censorship... has become one of the greatest atrocities to free speech and government transparency since the Cold War," the video claims.
It said the "denial of service" attacks would start in five days time, on March 29, at 11am New Zealand Time.
The Department of Internal Affairs senior communications manager, Tony Wallace, told the National Business Review that 41 of the department's websites had been intermittently down since Tuesday.
He could not confirm why the sites were unavailable.
"We don't know that it's a hacker" he said.
The Department has defended itself against the claims of censorship, saying it offers a filtering system to internet service providers on a purely voluntary basis.
It says the filter, which went live in February 2010, is aimed at reducing the trade in child sexual abuse and only blocks sites linked to the illegal practice.
So far six ISPs have adopted the system: Airnet, Maxnet, Telecom, Telstra Clear, Watchdog and Xtreme Networks.
A temporary Civil Defence website has been set up with important information while the problem is fixed.
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