Cops Seize Server That Hosted BlueLeaks, DDoSecrets Says
Cops Seize Server that Hosted BlueLeaks, DDoSecrets Says:
Authorities in Germany have seized a server used by the organization that published a trove of US police internal documents commonly known as BlueLeaks, according to the organization's founder.
On Tuesday, Emma Best, the founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets or DDoSecrets, a WikiLeaks-like website that has published the police data, said that prosecutors in the German town of Zwickau seized the organization's "primary public download server."
"We are working to obtain additional information, but presume it is [regarding] #BlueLeaks," Best added on Twitter. "The server was used ONLY to distribute data to the public. It had no contact with sources and was involved in nothing more than enlightening the public through journalistic publishing."
Best shared a screenshot of the email they received from DDoSecrets' hosting provider informing of the server seizure.
"Your server has been confiscated," the email reads. "Until now we were not allowed to inform you accordingly." The email then notes that the seizing authority was the Department of Public Prosecution Zwickau.
German Authorities Seized the Servers that Hosted BlueLeaks Police Files at the Request of the US Government
The site that hosted hundreds of thousands of leaked police files — dubbed BlueLeaks — has been taken offline after its servers were confiscated by German authorities acting at the request of the US government.
[...] It's not clear what legal grounds the US has to take the server offline. Hacking the government is a crime, but the Supreme Court has upheld the right of journalists to publish leaked documents as long as they weren't involved in their theft. DDoSecrets maintains that it's a publisher without any ties to the hacker who first obtained the BlueLeaks files.
A spokesperson for the Zwickau prosecutor's office told the German outlet Zeit Online [in German] that they were aware DDoSecrets is a journalistic project, but declined to provide any further information.
Previously: "BlueLeaks" Exposes 269 GB of Data from Hundreds of Police Departments and "Fusion Centers"
Related Stories
'BlueLeaks' Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments
Hundreds of thousands of potentially sensitive files from police departments across the United States were leaked online last week. The collection, dubbed "BlueLeaks" and made searchable online, stems from a security breach at a Texas web design and hosting company that maintains a number of state law enforcement data-sharing portals.
The collection — nearly 270 gigabytes in total — is the latest release from Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), an alternative to Wikileaks that publishes caches of previously secret data.
In a post on Twitter, DDoSecrets said the BlueLeaks archive indexes "ten years of data from over 200 police departments, fusion centers and other law enforcement training and support resources," and that "among the hundreds of thousands of documents are police and FBI reports, bulletins, guides and more."
Fusion centers are state-owned and operated entities that gather and disseminate law enforcement and public safety information between state, local, tribal and territorial, federal and private sector partners.
BlueLeaks from Distributed Denial of Secrets. [Dataset link has been nonresponsive since this story was submitted.]
Also at Vice, Forbes, ZDNet, and SecurityWeek.
Related: Virginia Police Have Been Secretively Stockpiling Private Phone Records
Washington State Fusion Center Accidentally Releases Records on Remote Mind Control
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:18PM (5 children)
See! It was a mistake to self host. Just upload your content on a cloud server or social media website.
No-one there would ever censor or shutdown your content.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:01PM
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj43xq/cops-seize-blueleaks-ddosecrets-server [vice.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @07:53PM
>> See! It was a mistake to self host.
That's right... if #CrookedHillary had uploaded to a cloud server, she'd be President now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:41PM (2 children)
What are you talking about? The article summary quite clearly says they were using a cloud server. They didn't even know their server had been seized until after it was seized, when their hosting provider sent them an email to inform them.
I guess this is a good reason to host politically-sensitive stuff like this in Russia. I honestly don't know why people like this keep thinking otherwise. It's simple: if you want to post stuff the American or UK governments doesn't like, host it in Russia. If you want to post stuff the Chinese or Russian governments don't like, host it in America.
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday July 12 2020, @04:52AM
Yep. Folks who fucked up Hillary did exactly that professionals they were.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday July 12 2020, @03:09PM
there must be a brisk informal trade between the two systems that betrays a lot of actions taken by both internal security services, as well as true relations between the us and russia.
But that job, "will we approve this american request for this data from our totalitarian surveillance system or say no?" and visa versa must be some real catch 22 mindf_ck festival.
Privacy meet the year 2020. Actual privacy is not an option in the digital world, but you might be able to get your data somewhere that protecting your privacy is a way for your lesser adversary to kick your greater adversary in the nuts.
Maybe there could be a board game?
"I have the nude picks of your wife, ill trade you those for -YOUR DATA-."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:05PM (8 children)
someone tell the us govermint that if they wanted the data they could just go to the website and click "download";
there's no need to confiscate the WHOLE server ...
i guess it's a case of "tax money allotment": if you don't spend your allotted tax payer moneies this year, you will get less of it next year, thus this convoluted way of obtaining the data was chosen?
surecast(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:16PM
There was probably something very sensitive buried deep. Make it disappear is the usual M.O.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:01PM (4 children)
The thing is we pay taxes. We have a right to that data.
OTOH governments are self serving. Just like the Chinese government, the U.S. government and every other government does things in their own best interest. They don't serve the public interest and neither do they intend to. They did not take down these servers for any noble cause, they did it to protect their own interests.
At least with attempts at legitimate elections we can somewhat try to hold the government accountable. But they still try to get away with as much as they can. It's unfortunate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @03:33AM
It's not because of how much money you give the government that you have rights. You're thinking of a business arrangement, which under Fascism 2.0 /is/ the government so maybe you have a point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:40AM (2 children)
Blueleaks also contains PII of victims of crime. So for example, if an abusive husband wanted to find his ex-wife, he now has a strong lead.
Leaking that kind of information just has benefit of mankind written all over it, wouldn't you say?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:50AM (1 child)
Fair enough. If that's really the case (I haven't read any actual reviews on these leaks, I'm going by what you said) then perhaps it's a bad thing these things leaked.
The problem is once they are leaked it's hard to put the cat back in the bag. The police department(s) that allowed said info to leak should be held liable for any damages caused by the leaks due to their negligence.
Also Wikileaks at least, supposedly, screened their leaks before releasing. Now that the U.S. has gone after Wikileaks the leaks from other sources seem to be unscreened. People don't have a good source to leak information to that will screen it first.
The primary reason governments went after Wikileaks is because most of the Wikileaks leaks were embarrassing to various governments. It is exactly this type of information that the public should have complete access to. The fact that governments tend to go after embarrassing information makes me suspect of claims that they are going after blueleaks for any legitimate purpose. Clearly their attempts to go after Wikileaks were mostly not legitimate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @11:28PM
Buaaaa haaaa haaaa! Yes, if you mean "is it bad about Hillary? Go with it! Is it bad about Trump and Putin? Bury it!" They indeed screened their leaks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:26PM
I know, right!
#DefundThePolice
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday July 11 2020, @11:40PM
Or a cavity search [amazon.com] to get ahold of the backup, if the hosters were able to pare the data down a little before storing it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:36PM (2 children)
As near as I can tell nobody's gotten Seth Rich'd over this, yet, so thats good.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:28PM
That's because I haven't scheduled their suicides yet.
-Hillary Clinton
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday July 12 2020, @03:14PM
who would report it if it did happen?
one obviously uninvestigated political assassination has a, what do you call it, chilling effect.
Who owns and controls sinclair broadcasting? CNN? NBC?
That is who decides if something is a national story or not, and none of those entities is going to protect anything like WL or whatever this alternative is.
Effect leak of police documents has had on anything? null.
At some point you are leaking your documents to last newspaper on earth that isnt coopted in the conspiracy itself.
I can certainly tell you no reporter was there to listen the day I realized my rights were being horrifically violated. The list of auto computer malfunction accidents is growing, german prince died mysteriously 2 months ago on his ducati in good weather.
We are here.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:35PM (1 child)
We don't need no steenking "legal" grounds. Got my M16 and F-35, that's all the "legal" I need...
By the way, is there really only one server hosting this? Oops!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:44PM
It was the web seed they hosted directly. The torrent and other web seeds are still alive.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday July 12 2020, @02:33AM
Wow, do the police cooperate even across national borders to suppress evidence of their crimes?
(Score: 2) by srobert on Sunday July 12 2020, @04:22AM (3 children)
"but the Supreme Court has upheld the right of journalists to publish leaked documents as long as they weren't involved in their theft. "
Somebody tell this to Julian Assange's attorneys. Then the authorities will have to let him go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:42AM
They're not going after Assange over that. I'm sure it's a motivating factor though.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday July 12 2020, @03:16PM (1 child)
It takes a long time for all involved to realize law doesnt mean anything anymore.
The operational principles of the dark age go into effect long before the full consequences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @11:32PM
The larger issue is how long it takes dopes to actually understand an issue rather than ignore the details and jump to the conclusion you've already decided.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday July 12 2020, @04:38PM (1 child)
This story is at the top of worldnews on reddit, so you can assume the entirety of this is a psy op, including the avatar known as "emma".
Fact: You cannot be a headline on reddit without being a part of a psychological operation on the public.
So 250 gb? who got the full copy in time? How can this ever be verified now? How does this help any anti-police agenda actually? Who is there to even read the leaks now? The free speech community cant even get assange out of jail, or verify WL social media accounts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @05:47PM
No gurls allowed.