08 July, 2012

We’re getting wildly differing assessments : SCOTUSblog

We’re getting wildly differing assessments : SCOTUSblog: Our problem at the moment is that someone is trying to crash the blog. At 10:00 exactly, hackers are launching a “distributed denial of service” attack with 1,000 page views per second to try and bring us down. It does not work; our tremendous Deputy Manager Max Mallory has spent months augmenting our capacity, and the hackers give up after a few minutes. We do not know how many readers are on the Live Blog for the opinion announcement; our data at the time indicates it is rapidly approaching one million. During the day, we will receive 5.3 million hits (more than ten times our all-time daily high) from 1.7 million unique readers.

The Courtroom audio is also piped into the Solicitor General’s office at the Court. There, an Administration lawyer is waiting, Blackberry in hand. The White House, fearful that our Live Blog will crash under the load and perhaps unaware that electronic devices are not allowed in that office, has arranged for the lawyer to listen to the proceedings and send email updates every thirty seconds.