An online petition calling on U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May to cancel Brexit by revoking Article 50 has attracted millions of signatures, resulting to the parliament's petitions website going offline for hours.
This is because the volume of people trying to sign or monitor the petition created a DoS (Denial of Service attack) to the site.
Basically, since the site’s infrastructure can’t cope with the sudden surge.
"We know that the Petitions site is experiencing problems due to the number of people using the site. This is a mixture of people signing petitions and refreshing the site to see changes to the number of signatures. We are working to get the problems fixed as soon as possible," explained a spokesman for the House of Commons, but dismissed the petition as not being of the same significance as the 2016 Brexit referendum.
"Should it reach 17.4 million respondents then I am sure there will be a very clear case for taking action," noting it was "absolutely right that people do have the opportunity to put their views and that can then spark yet another Brexit debate."
The Petitions Committee apologized on Twitter for the problems with its website, saying “the rate of signing is the highest the site has ever had to deal with.”
The rate of signing is the highest the site has ever had to deal with and we have had to make some changes to ensure the site remains stable and open for signatures and new petitions. Thanks for bearing with us.
— Petitions Committee (@HoCpetitions) March 21, 2019
"The rate of signing is the highest the site has ever had to deal with and we have had to make some changes to ensure the site remains stable and open for signatures and new petitions. Thanks for bearing with us."
The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is "the will of the people".
Prime Minister Theresa May has twice failed to get Parliament to back her negotiating the Brexit deal with the EU, and she wants to put it to a third vote.
The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, however, has said he won’t allow this to happen unless her motion is substantially different from the last attempts.
May has asked the other EU countries for a three-month extension to Brexit, until before the newly-elected European Parliament starts to work in July 2019.
She also met with other heads of state on Thursday, but they are reportedly set to reject her request, offering only an extension until the day before the European Parliament elections take place on May 23, and only if the British Parliament approves her deal.
British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt said that if May's deal is rejected for a third time, the parliament could vote to cancel Brexit, or the EU could push Britain to hold a second referendum.
