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Hackers Publish Personal Data On Thousands of US Police Officers, Federal Agents (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A hacker group has breached several FBI-affiliated websites and uploaded their contents to the web, including dozens of files containing the personal information of thousands of federal agents and law enforcement officers, TechCrunch has learned. The hackers breached three sites associated with the FBI National Academy Association, a coalition of different chapters across the U.S. promoting federal and law enforcement leadership and training located at the FBI training academy in Quantico, VA. The hackers exploited flaws on at least three of the organization's chapter websites -- which we're not naming -- and downloaded the contents of each web server. The hackers then put the data up for download on their own website, which we're also not naming nor linking to given the sensitivity of the data. The spreadsheets contained about 4,000 unique records after duplicates were removed, including member names, a mix of personal and government email addresses, job titles, phone numbers and their postal addresses. The FBINAA could not be reached for comment outside of business hours. If we hear back, we'll update. "We hacked more than 1,000 sites," said the hacker. "Now we are structuring all the data, and soon they will be sold. I think something else will publish from the list of hacked government sites." When asked if they were worried that the files they put up for download would put federal agents and law enforcement at risk, the hacker said: "Probably, yes." The hacker claimed to have "over a million data" [sic] on employees across several U.S. federal agencies and public service organizations.
A lot of people say, if you do nothing wrong what do you have to hide? Well... this.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It was called a Phone Book.
I know an adult woman, her dad is 'stalking' her via her cellphone, he's a cop. Constantly texts her how he knows exactly where she is and she is paranoid about it. I explained to her how yes, he can tap into her cellphone unless she pulls out her battery. Advised her to change her cellphone number and take screenshots of all texts he's sent to her. Smartphones are spy devices with antennas, anyone can stalk someones location. Now she knows to get an order of protection against him.
Hey, they wanted reversible encryption. There ya go, the results delivered.
It would be interesting if the 'structure' they offer will be ways of finding all the cops that murdered black people because they're trigger happy around dark skin. I can't say if I'd be upset hearing some vigilantes decide to murder the racist cops who have all taken innocent black lives.
Lemme guess... password was "MAGA".
Nothing like protesting anarchists who think it's funny to destroy other people's property by having them all end up dead.
Nothing like protesting all those hackers who think it's funny to release information on people by having them all end up dead.
Same thing.
> Are you 14 years old? Go and fucking kill yourself, you degenerate retard.
Their data is legally required to be public record anyway.
Secret Police, like the East German STASI, always lead to abuse. Like this post, by a secret police, who commits a criminal violation of the anti-cyber-bullying laws.
Criminal complaint filed. Demand for victim restitution registered.
These breaches illustrate is what is possible today. Personal information is still relatively harmless and could in principle be collected by anybody from publicly available information. Imagine forced backdoor technology (as proposed again and again both from democrat and republican politicians) is implemented: then also bank, tax, health or business information of a larger population can be collected and be made available on a large scale. If FBI affiliated sites can not keep their data safe, what guarantees that backdoor information will be kept away from the wrong hands, once such technology is implemented.
Isn't this what the FBI wants for the rest of the sheep? Weak or zero encryption?
Govt lists are never a good idea, especially unencrypted.
Everyone deserves their privacy, unless they are under, active, directed, investigation. EVERYONE.
Privacy was the intention of the 4th amendment. They never expected cameras, gps, and browsers to follow our every action around the world, storing the data forever.
Robert Peel's 9 principles for policing by consent
To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
So why should they have any privacy themselves? Fuck 'em. No sympathy here.
If you want something secure, you don't put it on a computer system. Paper files have much more security to them. And I read that the Kremlin went back to paper for some critical activities long ago. And people who put their passwords in online password sites, well, they are asking for it.
E Proelio Veritas.
4000 records, small potatoes. The OPM hack did the same thing on a much larger scale 4 years ago. Back in 2015 the Federal Office of Personnel Management had their UN-ENCRYPTED files taken containing every single current and past Federal employee, and everyone who had ever applied for a top secret clearance. Over 21M people's personal information was taken, where as this was only 4000 unique records... .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This incident (among many others) should be kept in mind when the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies insist on backdoor keys for smartphone and computer encryption.
Federal agencies that can't their own data secure certainly won't be able to keep yours secure.
You know, between warrantless cell-phone surveillance, civil forfeit (ie theft), cops trying to arrest people for filming them and claiming it's illegal, and police shooting unarmed people ... I'm afraid I have little sympathy for law enforcement.
They seem to think we have no privacy and anything they do is legal, even when they know damned well it isn't.
As far as I'm concerned, this same shit should happen to everybody who works for Facebook or any other analytics company, anybody who makes surveillance products and doesn't seem to care they sell it to, and all of the other sacks of shit who actively erode our privacy.
Boo mother fucking hoo.
The police don't give a fuck about the law or your rights, so why the fuck would we think their privacy matters more than ours?
This does place police types at rick as well as their families and is a sad state of affairs. Yet, we do have a broken justice system that frequently enforces rotten laws, acts with discrimination, and is frequently ineffective or totally wrong as to whom they arrest and who they are willing to protect. At some point people do act up and strike back. Our laws need to be carefully over hauled with serious consideration as to the end consequences for the chain of events following arrest.
"Test to verify that when posting anonymously, my name shows."
They fooled you, it still shows your name. :-)
Assange's "Deadman Switch" clicked last night (and you have to love the file dates. . .)
And the "insurance torrents" are all back up:
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_D...
Published by a former New Hampshire Legislator. Live Free or Die!
Billyâ(TM)s Reward
Part of the Second American Revolution!
Why 'sic' when it's grammatically correct?
Hey... "if they haven't done anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about."
What an interesting idea. And since they like releasing personal info, how about those hackers release and publish THEIR personal info too?
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
The official position of the US Federal government is that the use of Stingrays does not require a probable cause warrant, because they claim Stingrays are a kind of pen register tap, which do not require a warrant, as decided in Smith v. Maryland. The government notes that they do not intercept the actual conversation, only tracking identity of the phone and its location. The devices do have the technical capability to record the content of calls and modify them, so the government requires these content-intercepting functions to be disabled in normal use. In September 2015, the US Justice Department issued new guidelines requiring federal agents to obtain warrants before using stingray devices, except in exigent circumstances. In 2015, the state of Virginia passed a law requiring the use of a warrant when using a stingray, and Washington state proposed a similar law. In addition, California, Minnesota and Utah have also passed laws requiring warrants for stingray use.
Replying since you posted AC, mod up insightful.
Aall you folks who think that it's only the right that engages in scaremongering and hyperbole and doesn't care about the facts... observe! Observe and be disillusioned.
... is closer to reality than the mainstream left's fear-mongering.
Why do you think the USA will fall to "rampant crime and chaos very soon"? We survived the gangster Prohibition years and the huge violent crime wave of the 70s-80s. The last time I checked, crime levels today are nowhere near either of those eras (including minors being murdered).
The really worrying thing about the right-wing version of this sort of fear-mongering (*only* this sort... I'm not talking about the other sorts of rabble-rousing that they do--anti-communism, anti-transgender, other sex-scare shit, etc.)
What do I mean by that? Well: 1. There really is a huge messy, violent drug war going on in Northern Mexico (gang vs. gang and us vs. gangs and Mexican authorities vs. gangs and Mexican army vs. Mexican corrupt cops and it goes on and on ). Trump didn't make that up, and if you ask anyone who lives there they will tell you it's got significantly worse over the past 20 years. It's vicious and nihilistic and... very corrosive to civilization, I don't know how else to put it. it's significantly messed up Mexico's society and economy, and yeah some of that nastiness spills over into the USA. (See disclaimer below)
[Disclaimer: a physical wall is fucking retarded, amnesty for 'rooted' and law-abiding Dreamers is the only sane or humane thing to do, and as a left-libertarian I favor a lot of de-criminalization and de-escalating of the drug war, and of course the USA is a major part of the problem by leaning on Mexico so hard to fight our war on drugs--thus jacking up the prices and enabling the black market to flourish.]
2. Islamism movements in other countries, with associated issues of terrorism and caliphate restorationism and all that--*are* really fucking scary and they aren't going away. Poll results on what average citizens from Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Afghanistan or Pakistan believe, for instance, is really terrifying, especially if you look at the trend lines of the past few decades. (And even a "progressive" and "secular" country like Turkey still has poll results that are more conservative sounding than Texas.) Fox News will say stupid and bigoted things about Muslims, sure. "Not all Muslims blahblahblah", yes yes I agree. Sure.
But underneath the hate and the bullshit and the "othering" that you wring your hands over, there is a real story there. Fox News isn't making up something out of thin air when they talk about Islamism and jihad. Globally speaking, it really is much, much, much more serious and cancerous problem than, say, white supremacy. The evil ultra-conservative Islamists are in control of multiple governments. They have the ability to control the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and they have militarizes. Bad and partisan rhetoric, but it's not a fantasy. Ditto the drug gangs in Mexico--not something Fox News made up whole cloth.
But YOU are making up something out of thin air when you predict the imminent collapse of American society (presumably) based on sensationlist reporting of shootings, despite the fact that things are much better than they were in the late twentieth century (and much MUCH better than they were in the early twentieth century.)
Yes, we have a murder rate that is too high for a "developed" nation and part of that is the availability of guns. But it's not a catastrophic problem. Car accidents still kill like 5x more people, the last time I checked. And despite what your echo chamber wants you to believe, it's not a growing problem.
Yea this is an overkill of a reply but I just wanted to point out... this is why it's so much cooler and sexier to be an outspoken right-winger than a left-winger these days. This is why there is still no "alt-left"... on so many issues, their hype machine remains woefully mis-calibrated.