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.

Comments

This

[fluffernutter]

A lot of people say, if you do nothing wrong what do you have to hide? Well... this.

Re:This

[i.r.id10t]

Indeed. I work for the state of Florida, and on request our HR dept has to supply names, salaries, job titles, etc. Unless you are a cop or related to a cop or a DA or judge or ...

And there are plenty of other laws that restrict people, other than cops. Heck, every single gun control law passed in the last 30 years has exemptions for police officers, even if the stuff isn't issued as a duty weapon/accessory.

Whatever happened to "equal protection under the law" ?

Re:This

[cayenne8]

Listen, my point is, if you really need a cop on every corner or a gun to feel safe do your family a favour and move to a safe country.

Look, in the US, likely as not, your chances of having a home invasion, or having to use a weapon to defend yourself, for most people not in a gang is VERY low.

Violent crime has been going down for decades.

HOWEVER, there is a chance. Even people in good neighborhoods get home invaded. Guess what, the criminals know the good houses have stuff in them that is valuable.

In the best of cities, the police response time for emergency is like 8 minutes.

A LOT can happen in 8 minutes.

It think it is a good thing in the US to have the choice to be able to defend yourself with firearms. Criminals have them, you should be able to have them too.

For the most part, the police are not there to prevent crimes, they are there to investigate crime scenes and find people to charge with crimes.

Hell, there are even court cases in the US that establish that the police actually aren't under obligation to protect you.

It's not the legal gun owners you have to worry about. Most gun crime in the US is by hand gun, rifles (even the "scary" semi-auto rifles like the AR or other models) account for a VERY small number of gun crimes.

And of the majority of gun deaths (let's remove suicides, that shouldn't be included)...are gang members shooting each other with stolen hand guns.

Yet...all the gun control being promoted, is not targeted at the largest problem. See this article The Assault Weapons Myth .

To me, it is like insurance, you likely won't need it, you hope you NEVER need it, but it is good to have around in case you do.

If you don't want a weapon in your house, fine...your decision.

If you don't want to carry concealed in your daily life, then don't.

But if "I" want to, and do so legally, then there is nothing that should prevent me from doing so, as insurance for my home, family and personal safety.

When seconds and minutes count, it is 100% up to YOU to protect and defend yourself, no one else is going to be there.

8 minutes is a lifetime when intruders are breaking into your home with you there.

People abusing positions of power

[Iwastheone]

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.

Re:People abusing positions of power

[Anonymous Coward]

Police cannot just tap a family members phone. The paranoid crap on here is not even close to how things actually work. It takes a near act of god to get a Title III wiretap. The Justice dept has to sign off and all other possible investigative methods must be exhausted.

LMFAO, yes all cops play by the book. Same for the people working in the telecoms companies, nobody has ever misused their position.

imagine if

[e**(i pi)-1]

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.

Cops support taking our privacy....

[Anonymous Coward]

So why should they have any privacy themselves? Fuck 'em. No sympathy here.

Already been done...

[sdinfoserv]

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/...

Oh, the irony ...

[timholman]

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.

Re:Nothing like protesting bad cops giving tickets

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like protesting bad cops giving tickets by having them all end up dead.

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?