MNN - Mother Nature Network

Revenge-seeking hackers have again struck at Bay Area Rapid Transit, this time infiltrating the agency's police association website to steal the personal information belonging to 102 officers.

 

The private details, which included the names, home and email addresses, and passwords of members of the BART Police Officers' Association, were published on Pastebin. The BART POA site is currently offline.

 

The action comes in response to BART's decision to cut mobile web and phone service during last Thursday evening's commute at four downtown San Francisco stations. Officials said a demonstration was planned to protest the July killing of a man by a BART police officer, and they wanted to prevent participants from being able to use mobile devices to communicate.

 

"A civil disturbance during commute times at busy downtown San Francisco stations could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators," BART said in a Saturday statement.

 

Calling the action a blow to First Amendment rights, the hacktivist group Anonymous responded by infiltrating the myBART.org site to plunder sensitive customer information and organizing a live protest that resulted in the temporary closure of four BART stations on Monday night.

 

Anonymous, however, did not immediately claim responsibility for the latest hack. According to one of the hacktivist collective's more reputable Twitter streams, someone joined an IRC channel, left the link to the dumped police records and left the chat room.

 

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