Last week, law enforcement websites were the target of hackers claiming to belong to the group Anonymous. Agencies from places such as Boston, Syracuse, NY, Salt Lake City, and Greece reported attacks. Hackers broke into databases for crime tracking and law enforcement member lists. Prior to last week, Anonymous also claimed responsibility for hacking and releasing information about the members of the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA), California’s biggest law enforcement group, in the later part of 2011.
As threats to every aspect of society become more and prevalent through the internet, especially to law enforcement, now is a good time to take control of and increase your privacy protection. Each year approximately 3.4 million people across the United States are reported victims of stalking, including cyberstalking, according to The Stalking Resource Center of the National Center for Victims of Crime. When the tables are turned on law enforcement, these cases reveal just how vulnerable we all are to crime no matter our background.
Although there is not much that can be done to retrieve your information after a hacker obtains it, you can do something about your information that is already published on the internet. Privacy for Cops specializes in helping law enforcement and public officials remove their information from data broker websites. These companies obtain mailing lists of consumers and create databases that any person with access to the internet can search through by name in order to find an individual. These sites pose risks to law enforcement whose job is to interact with the dangerous side of society every day, increasing the opportunity of retaliation against them and potentially their families. By publicizing names of millions of consumers along with city, state, address, and family relations, data broker sites help increase the incidence of the stalking and harassment of consumers, including law enforcement. The Department of Justice predicted in a 1999 report on cyberstalking that with the explosion of the internet, it would be hard to determine just how many stalking cases out of those reported annually would be aided by access to the internet and various sites like those owned by data brokers.
So if you have benefited from our Privacy Kits, please share this invaluable tool with other California law enforcement agents and their family members. You can visit our webpage to learn more about our privacy kits that are designed to increase police safety and police privacy. If you have not purchased one of our privacy kits, get one today.