Anonymous leaks US government crime statistics data

The hacktivist collective Anonymous announced on Monday that it was releasing 1.7GB of data "that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice". In fact, the data came from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), an agency which publishes statistics and data gathered from around the US justice system on its website. The BJS is an office of the US Department of Justice which has previously come under DDoS attacks launched by Anonymous.

According to the Anonymous press release and Youtube video, the data, which includes internal emails and the entire database of the BJS, was being released "to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government" adding that "we are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free". The 1.7GB file was published as a torrent, with links given to The Pirate Bay, but the torrent is now reported to be stalling at 93% complete.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said that it was "looking into the unauthorized access of a website server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that contained data from their public website". The statement noted that neither the BJS or the Department of Justice's site, justice.gov, were affected and remained operational. Users can still browse and download the many data collections of the BJS and use their analysis tools.

(djwm)