Anonymous denies releasing incorrect Ku Klux Klan member information

The hacktivist collective known as Anonymous has denied involvement in a data-dump on Monday that incorrectly outed several politicians as being members of the Ku Klux Klan.

On 29 October, the group said on a Twitter account called Operation KKK and through a YouTube video that it had obtained a list of names of KKK members which it said it had obtained through a hacked Klan-linked Twitter account, and pledged to release them.

However, someone claiming affiliation with Anonymous began publishing a list of names through the website Pastebin on Sunday afternoon, which was quickly discredited.

In an email to the Guardian from the address linked to the Operation KKK Twitter account, around which the ‘operation’ has coalesced, Anonymous disavowed involvement in Sunday and Monday’s release, saying its data will be released on 5 November.

“We did not release this list that circulated social media today and we do not vouch for the content of any work we did not complete ourselves,” the statement read.

The 57 phone numbers and 23 email addresses of alleged Klan members published before the original release date – which Anonymous said was planned to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the grand jury’s not guilty verdict in the Michael Brown case on 24 November, but was later moved forward to 5 November – are largely not linked to the Klan.

The Guardian found some of the working phone numbers listed belonged to non-profit organizations’ fax lines, a Georgia police department’s ‘most wanted’ number and even the donation line for the Democratic National Committee.

There were at least two numbers connected to a Klan membership hotline and three that were personal cell numbers of men who did not respond to requests made for comment.

One email address was linked to the Traditionalist American Knights (TAK), a group affiliated with the KKK.

Anonymous has historically operated as an amorphous, grassroots-style organization with no visible leadership or membership structure.

This lack of continuity across different channels controlled by or affiliated with Anonymous is most likely the reason for the premature and inaccurate release of the alleged Klan information, though it is not impossible that the release of information was an attempt either by a rival hacking group or a group sympathetic to the KKK to discredit Anonymous’s data.

As the release of the names began creating larger ripples across the internet on Monday, the collective began backtracking.

“The anons at the helm of this initiative vouch ONLY for the dox list that will be released from this Twitter account on November 5 2015,” the Operation KKK account tweeted almost 24 hours after the release of data on PasteBin.com. The larger Anonymous Twitter account, @YourAnonNews, which has 1.48 million followers, promoted this tweet.

“We respect the work of our fellow freedom fighters,” Operation KKK tweeted 20 minutes later. “However, we are unable to confirm, deny or take credit for any work that we did not do.”

— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) November 2, 2015

We respect the work of our fellow freedom fighters. However, we are unable to confirm, deny or take credit for any work that we did not do.

— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) November 2, 2015

This account has NOT YET released any information. We believe in due diligence and will NOT recklessly involve innocent individuals #OpKKK

The incorrect information appears to originate from a Twitter account with the name “@sgtbilko420”, which also claimed to be behind a denial of service attack that allegedly took down, among other sites, the website KKK.com on 31 October. On 29 October, he or she tweeted a disclaimer that said that they were not part of Anonymous, though they respected Operation KKK.

— Amped Attacks (@sgtbilko420) October 29, 2015

i am not apart of anonymous nor have i ever claimed to be,i am my own man that acts on my own accord.i do however respect #OpKKK

This missive was later retweeted from the Operation KKK account with a further disclaimer after the information leaked by the @sgtbilko420 account turned out to be fake.

When the organizations and groups listed in the Pastebin data dump were contacted for comment on their alleged membership with the white supremacy group, confusion was the first response.

“You have reached the general contact email address for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit organization working to reduce the threats from weapons of mass destruction and disruption,” Cathy Gwin, senior director of communications of the nonprofit, wrote to the Guardian.

“I have no idea why this email address would be on such a list,” she added.

At the University of Illinois archives department, staff interviewed immediately thought that some of their prior research was a flag for the hackers when aggregating the data, leading them to include their archives department on the list.

“What I believe could [provide] context here is that back in the early 20th century there was a small student group that adopted the name Ku Klux Klan,” said archivist William Maher at the University of Illinois, who was listed in the published phone numbers, told the Guardian.

“Five or six years ago we did some research to find more about this group. We prepared a FAQ they posted on the website,” he said. “Maybe they found it and put two and two together and got six.”

Maher denied any affiliation with the Klan and even pointed out that the student group he mentioned had no formal ties to the group either.

Anonymous is in the midst of an ongoing cyber-war which the group has been waging since a local Missouri chapter of the KKK distributed flyers during November 2014 threatening violence against activists protesting in Ferguson. The flyers warned protesters in Ferguson that they had “awakened a sleeping giant”.

A press release posted online on 27 October announcing the release of membership information stated: “After closely observing so many of you for so very long, we feel confident that applying transparency to your organizational cells is the right, just, appropriate and only course of action.

“You made a clear and ever present enemy of Anonymous when you threatened the lives of protesters and the men and women representing Anonymous on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri, in November of 2014,” the release said.

An unnamed representative from the Traditionalist American Knights was the only Klan-specific email address to respond to requests for comment and was unfazed by the attempted attack done by Anonymous.

“The only sad part of the story is that they can put people’s names out as being KKK who have never had anything to do with it,” the TAK representative wrote in an email to the Guardian.

“And some people will actually believe it because they saw it on the internet.”