Anonymous hits Texas law enforcement

HACKTIVIST GROUP Anonymous has leaked 3GB of emails and sensitive data stolen from multiple Texas police departments in an action it has dubbed Texas Takedown Thursday (TTT).

This is the fourth major leak in the group's "Chinga La Migra" campaign and is in retaliation for the July arrests of 16 people allegedly associated with Anonymous and its actions.

"In retaliation for the arrests of dozens of alleged Anonymous suspects, we opened fire on dozens of Texas police departments and stole boatloads of classified police documents and police chief emails across the state," the group wrote in an announcement.

"For every defendant in the anonymous 'conspiracy' we are attacking two top Texas police chiefs, leaking 3GB of their private emails and attachments," Anonymous added.

Anonymous claims it had supporters lurking on Texas police systems for over a month, siphoning away confidential data and emails including the personal information of many officers and passwords to government systems. The group released pieces of this information as teasers over the past few weeks.

Yesterday, it decided to dump it all online like it previously did with data stolen from Arizona law enforcement agencies. The information includes police records, notes about internal affairs investigations, training materials, security audits and even vulgar, racist communications between police chiefs.

"We are attacking Texas law enforcement as part of 'Chinga La Migra' as they continue to harass immigrants and use border patrol operations as a cover for their backwards racist prejudice," the hacktivists wrote.

To add to the leak's impact, Anonymous also defaced Texaspolicechiefs.org. The web site's administrators struggled for hours to regain control of the server, with the hackers managing to restore the defacement at least once during this period.

Traditional DDoS attacks against justice.gov and other law enforcement web sites were also part of TTT, as Anonymous was trying to send a strong message on the day when 14 people were arraigned in San Jose in connection to its attacks against Paypal.

As Anonymous campaigns like "Chinga La Migra" or "Antisec" escalate, the number of attacked law enforcement and intelligence agencies keeps rising. However, the police crackdown on the group is also intensifying with arrests being made in many countries. Just yesterday the UK Metropolitan Police Service announced that two more Anonymous suspects were detained. µ