Bloody Sunday, election, Irish, Ireland, British, Ulster, Unionist, Sinn Féin, SDLP, Ahern, Blair, Irish America

(by Liam Clarke, Sunday Times)

An online forum popular with dissident republicans was taken offline last week after users discovered the administrators were Sinn Féin supporters and activists. There have been accusations that private messages and an e-mail account were accessed.

Irishrepublican.net was taken down after a flurry of e-mails from users alleging data breaches. "Very few people knew this forum was being run by Sinn Féin people," said one. "Since I came off, I believed my private email has been hacked. It had the same password as my forum membership."

The forum was owned by Geri Timmons, an American who works part-time at Sinn Féin's Dublin bookshop, Daithi Byrne, from Navan, whose Facebook page describes him as a "senior consultant and activist" for Sinn Féin, and Deborah McCamon, an Arizona based Sinn Féin supporter who severed links with the site after the allegations surfaced.

McCamon and Timmons started the forum in 2007, using multiple aliases. Timmons was known as Seabird or Deckie, while McCamon called herself Hildy and Koneko.

"Geri was meeting members [of the forum] in Dublin, but they had no idea who she was," said McCamon. "The longer this deception went on, the more uncomfortable I felt, but Geri seemed to revel in it. It was when I suspected Geri and Daithi might have been reading private messages between members that I balked. We argued and I walked out."

The row went public last month when a site member claimed her messages had been accessed. The site closed temporarily and members were told there had been a "breach in security" by hackers.

Irishrepublican.net was popular because of the range of views expressed and the openness of the debate. Many members posted in support of dissident groups such as the IRSP, RSF, the 32 County Sovereignty Committee and newer groups such as Republican Network for Unity.

Byrne and Timmons said they had no immediate comment on the allegations. The site was back online last night.

This article first appeared in the Sunday Times on March 22, 2009.

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