Originally published at: Hackers say they will publish database of police informants | Boing Boing
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The idea that people trying get violent criminals off the street deserve to be hurt for their efforts is vile. If these people were exposing criminal behavior in the industrial sector we’d be lauding them as whistleblowers.
Not to mention that something over 75% of solved homicides are solved by “snitching” or confession in jail (for some other crime).
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So we’ll soon see a round of deaths of police informants… /s
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Additionally, it should be discomforting that foreign actors are leading the charge on this. This is a disruption and an unwelcome one.
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They don’t seem like some fancy state actor.
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Many of the “solved” homicides are snitches who agree to testify against someone when it is not clear they really have reliable information. Often the police pressure someone into false testimony.
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In other news, a couple of guys from Brooklyn got arrested for having looted banks in Eastern Europe and Russia:
It makes a lot of sense to steal from other countries rather than from your neighbors, and it works both ways.
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Somehow I think the informants will be more concerned than the police. Sure the police don’t want to lose an informant but they can always coerce someone else into becoming their new informant. I think the hackers might be hitting up the wrong people for their ransom payment.
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There’s a fairly recent episode of The Reveal podcast on something like this. Guy has been serving in prison the majority of his adult life thanks to informants when information was scarce. Horrifying.
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Howsabout they publish the list of dirty cops instead.
Get a nice bid war going between the people and the PD.
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Why not both?
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About 10 years ago, I did some work with my local police service’s Confidential Source (not confidential informant or snitch) department. All files about sources were kept in a locked cabinet (paper) or on a computer not attached to any network. These were then always locked in an office that was locked within another office inside an area of the police station that only authorized staff were able to access. There would be no way for hackers to get those files because those files only existed within that locked room. Of course, other agencies mileage may vary.
I am sure they entered the records into an air gapped network thinking that it was an impenetrable security measure.
They don’t deserve violence, but the informant system isn’t great either. Bad information and straight up lies from informants has gotten plenty of innocent people hurt or killed. Staying out of jail, payments, and various punishments for not cooperating all create perverse incentives to produce information even if it’s not accurate.
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Additionally it can also be part of the system for cops to launder illegally obtained information.
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If anybody here knows who those hackers are, you’d better fess up.
Come on. Out with it
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