BlueLeaks, sometimes referred to by the
Twitter hashtag
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
#BlueLeaks, refers to 269.21
gibibytes
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
of internal
U.S. law enforcement data obtained by the hacker collective
Anonymous and released on June 19, 2020, by the activist group
Distributed Denial of Secrets
Distributed Denial of Secrets, abbreviated DDoSecrets, is a non-profit whistleblower site for news leaks founded in 2018. Sometimes referred to as a successor to WikiLeaks, it is best known for its June 2020 publication of a large collection of ...
, which called it the "largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies".
The data — internal intelligence, bulletins, emails, and reports — was produced between August 1996 and June 2020 by more than 200 law enforcement agencies, which provided it to
fusion centers. It was obtained through a security breach of Netsential, a web developer that works with fusion centers and law enforcement.
The leaks were released at hunter.ddosecrets.com and announced on the @DDoSecrets
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
account. The
account was banned shortly after for "dissemination of hacked materials" and "information that could have put individuals at risk of real-world harm." ''
Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'' reported that Distributed Denial of Secrets attempted to remove sensitive information from the data before publication.
National Fusion Center Association
In the United States, fusion centers are designed to promote information sharing at the federal level between agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Justice, and st ...
(NFCA) officials confirmed the authenticity of the data, according to documents obtained by security journalist
Brian Krebs
Brian Krebs (born 1972) is an American journalist and investigative reporter. He is best known for his coverage of profit-seeking cybercriminals.Perlroth, Nicole.Reporting From the Web's Underbelly. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved February 28, ...
; the organization warned its members that hackers may use the leaked information to target them.
Background
The Blue Leaks data comes largely from the intelligence gathered by
fusion centers. After the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, the United States government sought to improve communication between different levels of law enforcement to better discover and prevent terrorist attacks. They encouraged state and local governments to create fusion centers: physical locations where representatives of different law enforcement agencies share and collectively analyze intelligence before distributing reports back to their respective agencies. Fusion centers have since begun working with private "data brokers" with little public oversight.
Fusion centers have been criticized as privacy-invading, ineffective, and targeted at political groups. In 2012, the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), stood up in March 1941 as the "Truman Committee," is the oldest subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (formerly the Committee on Governme ...
found that over the 13 months of review, fusion centers did not contribute to the identification or prevention of a terrorist plot,
and that of the 386 unclassified fusion center reports it reviewed, three-quarters had no connection to terrorism at all.
In 2008, the
Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...
identified a number of privacy-related concerns created by fusion centers. The department noted that the excessive secrecy of fusion centers led to comparisons with
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from Counterintelligence, Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of Covert operation, covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation ( ...
, and that fusion center reports sometimes distribute inaccurate or incomplete information. The 2012
Senate report points to a report issued by an Illinois fusion center in 2011. The report wrongly claimed that Russian hackers were to blame for a broken water pump, and despite the Department of Homeland Security publicly stating the report was false, its
Office of Intelligence and Analysis included the claims in its report to
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
.
After the
murder of George Floyd
On , George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered in the U.S. city of Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer. Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's ...
and other instances of police violence in 2020, law enforcement in the United States came under renewed scrutiny. In early June, the hacker collective
Anonymous announced its intent to expose police misconduct. The collective did high-profile hacks in the 2000s and early 2010s. In 2011,
Antisec, a subgroup of Anonymous, released law enforcement information in support of
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in September 2011. It gave rise to t ...
protestors, but the collective had few significant operations within the United States since then.
Findings
The BlueLeaks collection includes internal memos, financial records, and more from over 200 state, local, and federal agencies.
More than one million documents were leaked from law enforcement fusion centers.
In leaked documents, officers track individual, group, and event pages with protest or anti-law enforcement rhetoric. Some of the documents contain material related to the attitudes of law enforcement and their response to the
Black Lives Matter movement
Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...
,
George Floyd protests
The George Floyd protests were a series of protests and civil unrest against police brutality and racism that began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, and largely took place during 2020. The civil unrest and protests began as part of internat ...
, and
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
.
During the George Floyd protests, law enforcement agencies monitored protesters' communications over social media and messaging apps. Reports leaked found that the police were aware of the potential for their surveillance to violate the
Constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.
When ...
. They distributed documents to police filled with rumors and warnings that the protests would become violent, sparking fear among police officers.
The documents also show a much broader trend of surveillance. They show details about the data that police can obtain from social media sites including
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
TikTok
TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes.
TikTok is an international version ...
,
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
and
Tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...
, among others. Fusion centers also collect and distribute detailed data from automatic license plate readers.
Surveys from law enforcement training programs reveal that some instructors were prejudiced and unprofessional. Classes taught biased, outdated, and incorrect content. Some contain sexual content unrelated to the class, and there was one report of an instructor admitting to lying in court frequently.
In
Maine
Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...
, legislators took interest in BlueLeaks thanks to details about the Maine Information and Analysis Center, which is under investigation. The leaks showed the fusion center was spying on and keeping records on people who had been legally protesting or had been "suspicious" but committed no crime.
Documents also contain reports about other countries from the Department of Homeland Security,
U.S. Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other ...
and other agencies. Officials discussed cyber attacks from Iran and concerns about further attacks in early 2020. Another report discusses possible Chinese espionage at natural gas facilities. Homeland Security also discussed Russian interference with American elections, attempts to hack the 2020 census, and manipulation of social media discussion.
Google's CyberCrime Investigation Group
On August 21, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' revealed, based on the leaked documents, the existence of
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
's "CyberCrime Investigation Group" (CIG). The group focused on voluntarily forwarding detailed information of Google, YouTube, and Gmail users, among other products, to members of the Northern California Regional Intelligence, a counter-terrorist
fusion center, for content threatening violence or otherwise expressing extremist views, often associated with the
far right. The company has also been said to report users who appeared to be in mental distress, indicating suicidal thoughts or intent to commit self-harm.
[
One way Google identified its users in order to report them to law enforcement was by cross-referencing different Gmail accounts, which eventually led them to a single Android phone. In some cases, the company did not ban the users they reported to the authorities, and some were said to still have accounts on YouTube, Gmail, and other services.]
Response
Shortly after the leaks were released, on June 23, Twitter permanently banned DDoSecrets's Twitter account for distributing hacked materials. Twitter also censored all links to the DDoSecrets website.
German authorities seized a server used by DDoSecrets at the request of U.S. authorities. The server had hosted the BlueLeaks files, but the documents remained available for download through BitTorrent and other websites.
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
banned r/BlueLeaks, a community created to discuss BlueLeaks, claiming they had posted personal information.
There is a federal investigation relating to BlueLeaks. Various Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request:
* Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act
* ...
requests filed about BlueLeaks and DDoSecrets were rejected due to an ongoing federal investigation. Homeland Security Investigations
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...
has questioned at least one person, seeking information about BlueLeaks, DDoSecrets, and one of its founders, Emma Best.
The editor for ''The Intercept
''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing news website founded by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras and funded by billionaire eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Its current editor is Betsy Reed. The publication initially reporte ...
'' described BlueLeaks as the law enforcement equivalent to the Pentagon Papers
The ''Pentagon Papers'', officially titled ''Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force'', is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 ...
.
See also
*Afghan War documents leak
The Afghan War documents leak, also called the Afghan War Diary, is the disclosure of a collection of internal U.S. military logs of the War in Afghanistan, which were published by WikiLeaks on 2010. The logs consist of over 91,000 Afghan War ...
* Cyberwarfare
*Electronic civil disobedience
Electronic civil disobedience (ECD; also known as cyber civil disobedience or cyber disobedience) can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disob ...
*Hacktivism
In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism (a portmanteau of ''hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hac ...
- The act of computer hacking for political reasons.
*Jeremy Hammond
Jeremy Hammond (born January 8, 1985) is an American activist and former computer hacker from Chicago. He founded the computer security training website HackThisSiteLuman, Stuart. ''Chicago'' Magazine, July 2007"The Hacktivist" in 2003.Hayes, ...
- Hacktivist who also leaked information relating to law enforcement.
*Iraq War documents leak
The Iraq War documents leak is the disclosure to WikiLeaks of 391,832 United States Army field reports, also called the Iraq War Logs, of the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009 and published on the Internet on 2010. The files record 66,081 civilian deat ...
* Panama Papers
*Paradise Papers
The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsch ...
References
{{reflist
Classified documents
George Floyd protests
Law enforcement in the United States
News leaks
United States documents
Anonymous (hacker group)
Data breaches in the United States
Hacking in the 2020s
June 2020 events in the United States