Cyber activists linked to Anonymous have executed a hack and extract operation against the Salt Lake Police Department (SLPD) website.
According to Salt Lake Police Sgt. Shawn Josephson, the only data that seems to have been lifted was the names and e-mail addresses of those who signed up to receive SLPD press releases.
“Our first concern has been making sure that we know exactly the type of information they obtained and we are fixing any loop holes,” Josephson told the Deseret News. “And then we are seeking prosecution.”
Anonymous apparently targeted the police department because its officers will be acting as “foot soldiers” – enforcing a proposed anti-graffiti bill sponsored by state Sen. Karen Mayne.
“We know there’s money to be made in the ‘just doing my job’ compartmentalized economy,” Anonymous explained in an online communiqué. “Therefore we know that regardless of the intent of Karen Mayne’s haphazard lawmaking, this will end in corporations selling miniature drones to police officers chasing 13-year-olds.”
Indeed, Mayne’s SB107 would make possession of graffiti tools such as spray paint a class B misdemeanor if it can be proven that an individual intends to deface property. Anonymous also accused Mayne of watching “Minority Report” too many times. The popular movie stars Tom Cruise and depicts a world in which people are punished for criminal intent – before they commit an actual crime.
“A law prohibiting ownership and use of purchased products based on suspected intent? If all the senator has to offer is a policy that will lead to self-righteous escalation of enforcement, consider this our deterrent,” the group added.
In other Anonymous related news, the collective – operating under the OpBlitzkrieg banner – claims to have obtained e-mails from a far-right, US-based group that reveal active links with the British National Party (BNP). According to The Guardian, the group managed to infiltrate the site of American Third Position, a white nationalist political order, publishing emails in which it praised the BNP leader, Nick Griffin.
One e-mail read as follows: “I’ve got my tickets for Jared Taylor’s 2010 American Renaissance. Your fellow WhiteNewsNow members are meeting up with some more of us and probably the most effective White activist in the world today, Nick Griffin.”
For their part, Anonymous denounced American Third Position as little more than “racist losers” who “try hard to maintain a professional public image to camouflage their vile racism.”
“We call upon not only other anti-fascists but all those opposed to white supremacy to utilize this information and make hell for these white nationalist scumbags… It is essential if we wish to live in a world free from oppression to expose and confront racists at their jobs, their schools, at their homes and in the streets.”
