“BlueLeaks” Data Dump Contains Police Files of Hundreds of Law Enforcement Agencies, Tied Back to a Third-Party Services Provider

By Scott Ikeda for CPO Magazine
Tuesday, July 7, 2020

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While Anonymous and DDoSecrets are framing this as a move made in solidarity with “Black Lives Matter” and similar police reform protests, it appears that the data dump contains a good deal of highly sensitive information about crime victims and subjects of investigations. The information is also not limited to American organizations or subjects. The front page of the DDoSecrets indicates that there is information about citizens of 254 countries including thousands from the tiny Seychelles islands as well as Mexico, Honduras and Canada. The data dump also appears to contain tens of thousands of driver’s license numbers and scans, dates of birth and home addresses among other pieces of sensitive data. DDoSecrets spokesperson Emma Best claims that the group attempted to scrub files for sensitive personal information before release but that they “probably missed things.” Twitter has banned the sharing of URLs leading to the information given that it could cause harm to individuals.

Ilia Kolochenko, Founder & CEO of web security company ImmuniWeb, notes that the leaked data could prove to be more damaging to innocent citizens and undercover law enforcement agents than it is to problematic police officers: “The eventual outcome of this leak will likely have disastrous effects for many innocent people. First, it will likely inflict irreparable reputational, financial and even physical harm to suspects and people charged with crimes who later were acquitted in a court of law.

Furthermore, it will jeopardize legally protected people, like witnesses, who helped investigators convict dangerous criminals. The disclosure will now literally cause the death of the witnesses if their identity is revealed to the criminals or their bloodthirsty accomplices.”

Wired reporting indicates that the police files did contain some information on tracking of and response to the ongoing protests, however. Internal reports indicate that police in some areas are monitoring social media accounts of protesters for anti-police messages, and are also attempting to track Bitcoin donations to groups associated with the protests. The internal memos also indicate that there is at least some credence to the theory that white supremacist groups may be posing as “Antifa” to incite violence at protests. Read Full Article