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Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

theintercept.com

41–50 of 84 posts

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#41
post #10

If you are getting paid by tax dollars then your personal data is a matter of public record. It is vital for prevention of corruption for the public to know where the tax dollars actually go.

Including address and phone number? Doesn't that also enable public workers to be target of harassment?

If you get direct mailers or telemarketing phone calls, your address and phone number are not private.

California already has laws that require some transparency of who works for the government (I'm not exactly sure which data points), but allows a few classes of workers (eg. police, judges) to opt out for security reasons. For anyone who gets a phone, you have to pay to opt out of your contact info being publicly sold.

Modern society doesn't make it easy to avoid leaving a trail of contact info with lots of different vendors. This is exactly the same reason BlueLeaks was possible -- a fusion center vendor collected too much info and didn't bother to sufficiently secure it.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#42
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be a problem? Yes, naturally. But the good of preventing government corruption outweighs the bad in this case. There are existing laws against harassment that provide recourse.

So whenever there is a federal statute that criminalizes something means states shouldn’t have redundant laws doing the same?

I would argue we are already way too far down the road of "redundant statutes".

According to the book "3 Felonies a Day", there are well over 300,000 crimes in US jurisdictions, which is far beyond what any person could read, know, understand, and internalize. At this point, if you're not a convicted felon, it's simply because the government isn't efficient at prosecuting, not because you haven't broken a law.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company does work for local, state, and federal governments but 90% of our work is private. Should my details be public information? I work on projects paid for with government money.

Doubtful that second order payments would be worth tracking. If a judge tips a waitress $5 from his wallet, the waitress is getting paid with private funds, not tax dollars. If a judge tips a waitress with the county court house credit card, that might be something worth tracking, esp if the tip was $5000.

> Doubtful that second order payments would be worth tracking.

Oh sweet summer child. First order corruption happens in banana republics. The vast majority of corruption in OECD countries happens one or two orders out (or has been legalized like lobbying in the USA).

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#44
post #2

This isn't right. Group behavior should not affect individuals in this way.

Why shouldn't it? Putting on a uniform assumes responsibility for the positions and actions of the represented organization - here the various police forces and unions of the United States. Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices. I find it hard to stomach the idea that people shouldn't be judged for the organizations they choose to…

> Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices.

No, many police officers are now being punished for being police officers.

You would just be doing your job properly - no racist actions anything unjust - and now these details leak out.

Yes there are police officers which are racist, I don't have data so I won't say few nor many, but there are. That doesn't justify this.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#45
"After the BlueLeaks data was published, Twitter has permanently suspended the DDoSecrets Twitter account, citing a policy against distributing hacked material. Twitter has also taken the unprecedented step of blocking all links to ddosecrets.com, falsely claiming, to users who click that the website may be malicious."

Funny that Twitter had no problem with the Wikileaks dump from Bradley/Chelsea Manning.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#46
post #9

I didn't realize Twitter and Reddit were suppressing discussion of the blueLeaks data. It's an interesting position to take. If you can discussion of all leaked data dumps do you draw the line when it is about state actors? Can you discuss Equifax hack, that is about personal information as well, but was done by state actors?

Wikileaks actually redacted a lot of (personal) data to protect people (tho some people like to claim again and again they did not). BlueLeaks, it appears, does not, and contains home addresses and other personal information of cops. Create transparency, investigate and show police misconduct? Great! Put cops and their families at risk? Nope!

The Julian Assange "poison pill" link was posted on Twitter, and later the password to the archive was also posted. This provided FULL UNREDACTED versions of all the leaked info.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#47

>For example, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center has 29,114 accounts, and each one includes a full name; rank; police department or agency; email address; home address, ... So that means that anyone with access to the system can get the home addresses of all their co-workers that also have accounts on the system? Why would all this personal information be associated with an account of this type? Thi…

> can get the home addresses of all their co-workers

When mammoths roamed the earth, there was this "phone book" thing listing the full name and address of anyone with a phone line in the city, except for unlisted numbers (those could be had by request).

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#48
post #2

This isn't right. Group behavior should not affect individuals in this way.

I wonder if LEOs say that about gangs. If you think this is controversial today, the southern police evolved from slave catchers. If you think that cultural history is irrelevant today, I have a confederate flag to sell you. (Not really, I don't actually collect flags from white slavocracies.) https://lawenforcementmuseum.org/2019/07/10/slave-patrols-an...

If you had an actual, authentic Confederate battle flag to sell me, at a price I could afford, I would buy it. There are only a few in existence, and it would be an amazing historical artifact I'd love to help preserve.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#49
post #2

This isn't right. Group behavior should not affect individuals in this way.

Why shouldn't it? Putting on a uniform assumes responsibility for the positions and actions of the represented organization - here the various police forces and unions of the United States. Police officers aren't being judged or punished for the color of their skin, creed, religion, or sexuality but their choices. I find it hard to stomach the idea that people shouldn't be judged for the organizations they choose to…

I don't think this logic is beneficial for humanity. If you take the worst parts of any organization or group and generalize it across the entire group, you end up with stereotypes, bias, and discrimination...the very things that led us down this path in the first place. There are better ways to approach this.

Re: Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Data of 700k Cops

#50

I have a philosophical problem with leaking people's personal information but I admit that I'm curious. I want to see what's in this data.

It's definitely worth the torrent, especially to see how slow many LE agencies are with keeping up with the technical times.

I may or may not have the torrent downloading right now. At this rate, it may or may not be finished some time tomorrow.
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