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A KKK leader says you shouldn’t believe Anonymous after Anonymous release details of KKK members
The online hacktivist group Anonymous stuck to its promise and began leaking information about allegedly active Ku Klux Klan members over the weekend, including a list of nine senators and mayors that the group claims are affiliated with the KKK or are “racist related.”
Anonymous released the list on Saturday as part of Anonymous’ larger data hack of the KKK. Anonymous had declared cyber war on the KKK after the white supremacist group threatened to use “lethal force” on protesters of the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri, protests after the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.
The “hacktivist” group has promised to release up to 1,000 identities of active KKK members on Nov. 5. However, Anonymous preponed the leak schedule and released the list on Saturday itself.
UPDATE:
We are ahead of schedule.
JOIN US: 10:00am (Central) Nov. 5 2015#OpKKK #HoodsOffhttps://t.co/2B1sGOER0q pic.twitter.com/ppxbTrNNsY— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) October 31, 2015
The list released by the Anonymous contains many leaders and political figures however Anonymous has said that their email addresses appearing on the list didn’t automatically mean that person was a member of the hate group. Anyone with access to one of those email addresses could have used it to register with the organization.
Anyone can provide fake information when signing up to a website, reporters should be aware of this.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) November 2, 2015
Ku Klux Klan says dont believe Anonymous
Meanwhile KKK said that people should not believe in Anonymous and the identities published by them were ‘bogus.’
Thomas Robb, the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, told TIME in an interview that while it’s possible some data from minor KKK chapters were leaked, his membership remains a safely guarded secret.
The Knights’ membership data is kept on two computers that are immune to Internet hacking, Robb said.
“One computer is right here in my house and it’s not connected to the Internet. I’m looking at it right here,” Robb said. “The other computer is at the main office just down the road, and it’s the same way: not connected to the Internet.”
If hackers wanted to access the membership data, they would have to break into his house, Robb said.
“They’d have to come in here and download it directly at the computer on a floppy disk—or, a drive—and it would be absurd for them to say that,” Robb said.
The hacking activist group Anonymous claimed last week that it has obtained numbers and emails of the KKK’s membership, and will post that information online. Some of it seemed to appear on Sunday evening on Pastebin, a website used to share and store text.
There is not much evidence to prove the information posted Sunday is real, however.
Some of the email addresses of alleged KKK members end in the .ru domain, typical for Russian accounts. A majority of the phone numbers listed appeared to be disconnected. One number tried by a TIME reporter was the main line for the Capital Region International Airport in Lansing, Michigan.
A group affiliated with Anonymous said it was not responsible for releasing the names.
This account has NOT YET released any information. We believe in due diligence and will NOT recklessly involve innocent individuals #OpKKK
— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) November 2, 2015
