Anonymous leaks 1.7 GB of data and email from the U.S. Bureau of Justice | Hacker News Reader

Anonymous leaks 1.7 GB of data and email from the U.S. Bureau of Justice

anonnews.org

104 pointsKenan31 comments

Umm... the US Bureau of Justice isn't the name of a federal agency. This dump is actually from the Bureau of Justice Statistics[0].

[0]http://news.yahoo.com/computer-hackers-access-u-justice-depa...

Unless I'm missing something, most of that data should already be available either through direct US government publications, or FOIA requests.

They actually have a website set up for asking for the information: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=daa

Halfway through that incredibly overdramatic video, it shows chains around the globe, with each link labeled something like "Police State" ... "Military/Industrial Complex" ... etc. Then there is one labelled "Vaccines". Has anyone, acting as Anonymous, ever taken an anti-Vac stance? I would have expected Anon to be on the scientific side of that issue.

Just to throw some paranoia on the paranoia, maybe the vaccine link shown is part of a government plot to discredit Anonymous.

Because somewhere in a Anon marketing meeting the DoJ plant pipes up and says "hey, we should put something about how vaccines are a tool of the 1%", and everyone else thinks it is a good enough idea to include it?

You can't make this shit up! Err, wait.

Dude.

The question isn't whether it seems implausible.

The question is whether you have any evidence that that's not what's going on. Because otherwise that's obviously just what the government wants you to think.

What you're doing is the same type of "reporting" that Fox News does.

"Since there's no evidence against my theory, you can't not not prove that it exists."

My earlier comment should be read as firmly tongue-in-cheek--like, puncturing the cheek--if people thinking it's serious is what's picking up the downvotes.

I downvoted it because it didn't really contribute anything to the topic, not that I didn't see the humour (something along the lines of that old HN/reddit chestnut). Just to let you know.

More like some Homeland Security squad is making and posting dumb videos and claiming that they're "Anonymous". This in order to make people think that Anonymous posts dumb videos.

It wouldn't be unprecedented. Most of the Bin Laden videos were phony.

I have no knowledge of Anon being anti-vaccine. If I were to formulate a hypothesis, I would imagine that they view 'vaccines' as synonymous with big health. So, "the big healthcare mafia is selling us 99-percenters vaccines at a huge markup, profiteering from their proprietary knowledge, state-protected monopoly, and our dependency."

Then again, Anonymous doesn't exactly have a unified message. It's possible that the individual creator of this video has their own conspiracy theories about vaccinations.

There's another one that says "big pharma" so I doubt that's what's being referred to as "vaccines"

The funny part about your comment is that vaccines are one of the least profitable things pharma sells.

It's all about the viagra.

Well that's nice. I'm glad they stand for freedom of information. There's nothing here I couldn't have gotten with a simple Freedom of Information Act request. But I guess sending them a letter requesting the information isn't dramatic enough for Anon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(Uni...

maybe the data came from a reply?

It wouldn't be difficult to find out. You can FOIA all the recent FOIAs.

I'm not convinced you can get a TB of internal emails via a simple FOIA request.

a TB != 1.7GB

I've done it. They'll put it on CDs or DVDs for you if you want, or work something else out if its more convenient. I've even hard cartloads of documents printed out for me. You have to pay for the printing, which gets expensive, but they'll do it. They have to.

Yes but can you request 'all internal emails for the last 3 months' or something as broad as that?

You can request anything. They're all public records. Granted, they'll call you and try to whittle you down. If its especially burdensome they'll charge you for the man hours it takes to compile all of the information.

If someone who ran a government office runs for elected office, chances are the opposing candidate will hire someone like me, and chances are I'll request all of the office's records for review. Thats how we find things like this. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/chris_christie_exce...

The relevant passage: The travel records date to when he was sworn in as U.S. attorney in 2002. They were obtained this week by the campaign of Christie's Democratic opponent, Gov. Jon Corzine, under the Freedom of Information Act.

I don't understand why commenters here speak of a "they". There is no "they" and Anonymous is not a group. It's a label that anyone can put on themselves. They may as well call themselves "freedom fighters" (lowercase).

It's frustrating how many people do not get this.

I mentally replace Anonymous with "protester(s)" making this headline something like "Protesters release 1.7 GB of data" which makes more sense.

A better way of putting it is that "The only reason the A in Anonymous is capitalized is because of 4chan tradition." It's not a proper noun.

Has anyone analyzed this data? I'm curious what's in it.

Just think of what a service these people are doing to the world and to the government by raising awareness of data security issues :)

Even if they would find anything incriminating, what are kids going to do with this? It's clear by the messages on the anon news site that a lot of them are teens and not activists. It may be entertaining but I don't get it.

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