Hackers Leak List of FBI Employees (vice.com)

puddingebola writes: The hackers responsible for the leaking of DHS employees made good on their threat to reveal the names of 20,000 FBI employees. From the article: "The hacker provided Motherboard with a copy of the data on Sunday. The list includes names, email addresses (many of which are non-public) and job descriptions, such as task force deputy director, security specialist, special agent, and many more. The list also includes roughly 1,000 FBI employees in an intelligence analysis role."

Comments

Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

This is asinine. There are good reasons why some of the employees of the DHS and DOJ aren't made public. For people working in an intelligence analyst role, an undercover agent, or something along those lines, leaking that information could make those people or their families vulnerable to kidnapping and violence. I understand leaking information about secret or top secret operations, especially when it's unethical and/or infringes on the rights of the people. This serves no such purpose. It's a juvenile action. Just because you have unauthorized access to do something and you have the skills to do so, that doesn't make it right.

Re:Asinine

[DigiShaman]

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Re:Asinine

[DigiShaman]

Between these hackers and Hillary Clinton keeping top secret info on her server, frankly, I don't think anyone cares anymore. We have an incompetent government elected by incompetent people. What the fuck can an smart and intelligent person such as myself do? I'm surrounded by a hoard of blooming idiots!

Re:Asinine

[DarkOx]

If operational security was taken seriously or important these organizations would be much much smaller. The more people who know a secret the harder it is to control. If the three letters want to be effective they need to go back to their original mandates and downsize to the minimal number of people required to execute on them.

The FBI tries to be the everything of law enforcement, they should not. In fact they should probably not even have arrest powers. I would argue make them investigators of federal but domestic crimes only. Let them investigate, turn the arrest warrants over to the marshal service to pick folks up.

Re:Asinine

[gstoddart]

This is asinine. There are good reasons why some of the employees of the DHS and DOJ aren't made public. For people working in an intelligence analyst role, an undercover agent, or something along those lines, leaking that information could make those people or their families vulnerable to kidnapping and violence.

But you know what, it really boils down to "if these agencies are going to spy on us, often in violation of the law and our rights ... and then use parallel construction to commit perjury, why should we care?"

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but the reality is the reasons these people don't want their information made public are their own problem. Especially when they show so little regard for us.

Just because you have unauthorized access to do something and you have the skills to do so, that doesn't make it right.

So, when these agencies use Sting Rays, or commit perjury via parallel construction so they can lie about how they got information and deny you legal process, or otherwise ignore the law ... is that right? Because a lot of people disagree that "because we said so" is a valid reason.

Yes, it's reckless and dangerous .. but it seems the kind of thing which is intended to say "not only can we not trust you bastards, you can't even secure your own shit." I can see the point: when law enforcement stops caring about our rights, it's well beyond the point where we should care about them.

There's an awful lot of anger over the fact that law enforcement has taken the attitude of we'll do whatever we can get away with. So, are they entitled to expect anything different?

But let's not pretend that there aren't on-going abuses by these agencies which happen all the time, and which undermine the very rights and freedoms they pretend to be protecting.

Re:Asinine

[cbiltcliffe]

This serves no such purpose. It's a juvenile action. Just because you have unauthorized access to do something and you have the skills to do so, that doesn't make it right.

I read it as "You want a backdoor key to every encryption scheme in the world, and you can't even keep your own employee lists safe?"

Re:Asinine

[Chas]

It's not that the government no longer cares about its citizens. It is that they've lost respect for their citizens and, having operated with impunity for so long, have lost their fear of what said citizenry can do when properly motivated.

All they need to do nowadays is keep the majority of us fat and happy and they figure they can do whatever the fuck they please.

And, for the most part, they're right.

Backdoors

[linuxwrangler]

And yet there are people who still think these folks could keep an encryption backdoor secure. They can't even keep the front door closed.

The best part about this...

[thedarb]

Is we can use it to start making a hiring blacklist for the private sector. Refuse to ever employ anyone who's ever worked for the FBI. Hopefully this list can grow to include NSA, as well.

It's like carpet bombing ourselves

[rjejr]

I'm not a big fan of government, or cops, or government cops, and I'd wear a tinfoil hat if I could afford the tinfoil, but releasing a blanket list of 20,000 employees seems more evil than good. I'd like to think that at least 20-30% of the people who work for the FBI aren't evil - maybe 10-15% for the NSA - and those people shouldn't all have their names and emails released on a stolen list. Go after the corrupt ones, post pictures of their illegal affairs and taking money under the table, wiretap their homes and release tapes of them talking about the 47%, but I'm not ready to lump them all together as evil and make a list for some psycho to use as target practice.

Re:Don't blame every individual

[gstoddart]

these people ... show so little regard for us.... when these agencies use Sting Rays, or commit perjury...not only can we not trust you bastards... So, are they entitled

Wow, that's a nice hack job of a quote you did.

Most of the people on that list aren't doing any of the the hings you complained about. You just lumped every individual law enforcement officer, undercover agent, secretary, and janitor who work for the FBI under one umbrella.

I'm not advocating it, I'm not condoning it, but I sure as fuck understand it.

The problem is, the agency as a whole has raised the ire of a lot of people. It's not like you can only target the people who do this stuff, and it's not like they give a shit.

The problem is, when they use things like Sting Rays or other blanket surveillance crap, suddenly other innocent people can end up on their radar without any legal basis other than "while we were listening to everybody else we saw this and then suddenly investigated you for fun". They do this shit to us already.

So, are we supposed to extend a courtesy to law enforcement they won't extend to us? Because that's some pretty wishful thinking.

because then me and 30,000 other innocent people who work for this company suddenly get on your shit list, and you think it is okay to release our personal data.

You're not on MY shitlist, I'm not the one doing this stuff.

But I'm afraid I can understand why someone who is angry at the FBI isn't willing to extend a courtesy to the rest of the members of the FBI that, as an agency, they don't extend to us -- because they don't concern themselves with our rights while they do this. These people work for an agency which is doing some things which are fairly widely known to violate your rights, bypass the Constitution, and ignore the letter and spirit of the law.

Which means the people lashing out at that agency aren't discriminating between the janitors, and the guys running the programs -- any more than the FBI are worrying about the rest of us.

Illegal blanket surveillance doesn't prune out the innocent people either. Parallel construction to lie in court about how they came to be looking at you violates your right to due process and the right to see your accuser, instead of someone who has fabricated a story after the fact to make it look like they didn't break the law -- you know perjury.

I have a hard time seeing this as some egregious offense against their rights while they do the same to us.