Hackers have leaked more than 20 years’ worth of FBI and police document online. The leak containing potentially sensitive law enforcement information and intelligence is said to be over 270GB in size.
The Hackers who collected the documents under the title “BlueLeaks” uploaded them to the Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) project, an alternative to WikiLeaks that is popular with so-called hacktivists.
Reports also indicated that about three thousand items contain the phrase”TOP SECRET” on DDoSecrets’ searchable online database, but almost all of these indicate the clearance level of email contact and not the contents of the document itself.
On Twitter, the project said the database “provides unique insights into law enforcement and a wide array of government activities, including thousands of documents mentioning COVID-19”.
The hackers took advantage of a breach of web services company in Houston, Texas to collect the data. These web services had several law enforcement agencies as customers.
The data was released on 19 June, also known as Juneteenth, which is not a federally recognised holiday in the US but is celebrated to commemorate the Union army proclaiming all slaves in Texas to be free in 1865, during the American Civil War.
The day before the release the project’s Twitter account tweeted #BlackLivesMatter.
It follows weeks of a renewed focus on racism in America, especially on law enforcement’s conduct towards black people following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.
According to Skynews, more than 6,500 documents are mentioning George Floyd in the database, including a threat assessment regarding a memorial event.
Just few of these documents were about Mr. Floyd’s death while out of the few most covered the protests across the US in response to the death, but most of the documents did not refer to the protests at all.
There is a large volume of material, much of which is incidental and informative rather than based on intelligence.
One unclassified FBI report warns that civil unrest in response to Mr. Floyd’s death could threaten law enforcement supporters’ safety.
It cites “an identified Twitter account dedicated to anarchist ideology” which posted: “See a blue lives matter flag, destroy a blue lives matter flag challenge.”
Another tweet it mentioned said: “Truck with ‘blue lives matter’ crap on it just got all the windows smashed out. Give em hell tonight. #AvengeGeorgeFloyd.”
Fewer than 500 of the hundreds of thousands of documents mention Antifa, a collective of militant anti-fascist protesters that President Donald Trump has moved to designate as a terrorist organisation.
