Twitter blocked DDoSecrets account

At the beginning of this week, a group of DDoSecrets activists (Distributed Denial of Secrets), describing itself as a “champion of transparency” published 269 GB of data publicly owned by law enforcement agencies and data centers in the United States. It has now become known that Twitter has blocked the DDoSecrets account.

This dump is called BlueLeaks and contains millions of documents, video and audio recordings that were stolen from Texas-based hosting company Netsential, which provides services to US law enforcement agencies.

“The dump contains files for more than ten years, owned by 200 different police departments and data centers in the United States. Most of the files are police and FBI reports, security bulletins, various law enforcement guides, and more”, – told DDoSecrets representatives Wired magazine.

This “damp” is considered 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.

BlueLeaks files are available on DDoSecrets’ own website, but the publication of the dump was announced and actively advertised via Twitter. And now Twitter has blocked the DDoSecrets account due to a violation of the rules: due to the distribution of data obtained illegally (that is, through hacking), which contain personal information, can be used to cause physical harm or contain trade secrets.

In an interview with Wired, the head of DDoSecrets, journalist Emma Best, said that activists did their best to avoid publishing any confidential information.

“The team spent a week cleaning files from “particularly sensitive data on victims of crime and children, as well as information about private enterprises, healthcare facilities and veteran associations”, – said Ema Best.

However, she also acknowledged that DDoSecrets might have missed something.

Now, representatives of Twitter told ZDNet that among the BlueLeaks data there really was unedited information that could put individuals at risk. The company also emphasized that the platform’s rules strictly prohibit the distribution of any such materials.

The social network has already been criticized because of this decision.

Many users point out an obvious discrepancy: previously, for months and even years, Twitter has not taken any actions to block accounts of well-known hacker groups, such as Guccifer 2.0, TheDarkOverlord, and so on. In addition, other accounts, such as WikiLeaks and numerous anonymous accounts, have long disseminated hacked data, but these accounts are still active.

The BlueLeaks dump is still available on the DDoSecrets website, however, users can no longer share links to it on Twitter, since in addition to banning the DDoSecrets account, the social network also banned the activists’ website URL.

Recall that last year, In Ecuador was arrested the head of the company responsible for the leakage of data of millions of citizen.