An activist group says it received hundreds of hours of mostly Dallas police aerial surveillance footage from an anonymous hacker claiming to target law enforcement data in unsecured cloud storage. The data breach is the latest incident drawing concerns about the city’s security of electronic police information after a former IT worker deleted millions of evidence files earlier this year.
Distributed Denial of Secrets, which describes itself as a transparency collective nonprofit, posted more than 600 hours, or almost 2 terabytes, of police helicopter and drone footage on its website Friday. Emma Best, a cofounder, confirmed to The Dallas Morning News this week that the videos were from Dallas police and the Georgia State Patrol.
Best said her group doesn’t know the identity of the person who submitted the footage and was given no reason why the two departments were targeted. Distributed Denial of Secrets recently shared leaked records with journalists allegedly from the Oath Keepers, a far-right paramilitary group, that showed its members include police officers from across the country.
The Oath Keepers have been linked to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and at least a dozen group members have been charged in connection with the attack. Senior Corporal Melinda Gutierrez, a Dallas police spokeswoman, said an investigation is underway to determine how the aerial footage was obtained.
“The department cannot confirm at this time how much video information was breached,” she said. “It is important to note that this video data was not lost nor is it missing.”
She declined to comment further until the city’s probe has ended. Bill Zielinski, Dallas’ chief information officer who oversees the city’s information and technology services department, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Axon, the company that stores police body camera and drone footage, said it was aware of the incident but said the breach didn’t involve its company.
