In mid-June 2020, a group of DDoSecrets activists (Distributed Denial of Secrets), describing itself as a “champion of transparency,” published 269 GB of data, belonging to law enforcement agencies and data centers in the United States. Now the German police seized the server named BlueLeaks, on which this dump was hosted.
Representatives of DDoSecrets claimed that the data was “kindly provided” to them by anonymous hacktivists.The BlueLeaks dump contained millions of documents, video and audio recordings that were stolen from Netsential, a Texas-based hosting company that provides services to US law enforcement agencies.
“Here have been stored files for more than a decade, owned by 200 different police departments and data centers in the USA. Most of the files are police and FBI reports, security bulletins, various law enforcement guides, and other data”, – say security experts.
This “dump” is considered to be the biggest hack in the history of US law enforcement, as it reveals classified materials for ten years, including how the US police trained personnel and conducted operations.
Since the publication of the dump was announced and actively advertised via Twitter, the company finally blocked the DDoSecrets account due to a violation of the laws: on prevention of disseminating data obtained illegally (that is, through hacking) that contain personal information, and which can be used to cause physical harm or keep trade secret. A ban was also imposed on the activists’ website URL.
Journalist Emma Best, the head of DDoSecrets, said that the German authorities had seized the server that hosted the BlueLeaks website and all the hosted there data.
“The server was used exclusively for disseminating information to the public. It had no connections with the sources and was used only to educate the public through journalistic publications”, — emphasizes Best and states that the authorities did not have a warrant.
As a result, the BlueLeaks portal went offline, and nothing has been announced about its possible restoration.
I recall that earlier in an interview with Wired, Emma Best said that activists did their best to avoid publishing any confidential information in BlueLeaks. So, the team spent a week cleaning files from “particularly sensitive data on victims of crime and children, as well as information on private enterprises, healthcare facilities and associations of veterans”. However, Best admitted that they might have missed something.
Last month, U.S. authorities said they were investigating the BlueLeaks leak, but it was not known whether an official investigation had been launched. It is currently unclear whether the German authorities acted at the request of their American colleagues or on their own initiative.
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