The RCMP is minimizing a breach of confidential data of 38 Canadian police agencies that was exposed by a group of hackers last summer that targeted police in the United States.
An activist group, Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), published thousands of documents amounting to 269 gigabytes online in June.
Dubbed the “BlueLeaks” archive, it indexed data from over 200 police departments, fusion centres and other law enforcement training and support resources.
The group said the documents were obtained from members of the hacker collective Anonymous.
The RCMP says it was one of the 38 police agencies in Canada affected by hack last June, but the hack did not have a “major impact” on sensitive operations. (CBC)
According to an RCMP statement, Brulotte reported, the leaked information involving Canadian law enforcement did not have a major impact on sensitive operations and was generally related to “training, administration and unclassified material which is non-sensitive in nature.”
“We found that there was no secret information that was disclosed,” said Insp. Daniel Côté, the officer in charge of the force’s National Cybercrime Coordination Unit (NC3)
“All the information that was online was administrative in nature.”
The RCMP statement said the information was hacked on the servers of US law enforcement agencies or their providers and Canadian data was there due to collaboration between Canadian law enforcement agencies and their US partners.
The RCMP declined to identify the other Canadian police agencies involved “for privacy and operational reasons.”
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says it received a report from the RCMP about the leak on Sept. 18, almost three months after it occurred.
A spokesperson said the incident raises “serious concerns” and the Privacy Commissioner’s Office is reviewing the report “given the sensitivity of the information involved.”
With files from Radio-Canada (Katherine Brulotte), CBC News
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