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Turkish Citizenship Database Allegedly Leaked Online (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: The entire Turkish citizenship database has allegedly been hacked and leaked online. A website with purportedly leaked details of 49,611,709 Turkish citizens is online and allegedly gives the following details of each citizen -- including the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan: National Identifier (TC Kimlik No), First Name, Last Name, Mother's First Name, Father's First Name, Gender, City of Birth, Date of Birth, ID Registration City and District, and Full Address. The apparent hack seems to be politically motivated. The website reads: "Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?"
The hack amounts to about 6.6GB worth of uncompressed files, which may make it one of the biggest data leaks of its kind in history. While The Register has also reported on the leak, some claim the leak has correct information but is just a decrypted version of data that was leaked over a couple of months ago. Specifically, the info contains data of Turkish citizens who voted in 2009 elections.
Which is the exact reason Putin's minions released this data now: to have the public talk about something else.
I'm not an admirer of Putin, personally, but I think we should try to be at least somewhat plausible when we accuse him of things. What is the general interest to us in the leaking of data from Turkey? They are not all that much in the spotlight, so as a diversion from the Panama leak, it is nothing, and while it is certainly inconvenient for Turkey, there is little in a citizenship database that is likely to keep Mr Putin and other embarrassed parties out of the headlines. Speaking of which - there is a lot of rich, influential people who have a strong interest in the Panama leak going away quickly - so why particularly Putin and not somebody else?