Data from hack alleges email sent by municipal employee to far-right militia group
Last month, a hacker claimed to have leaked reams of data from Oath Keepers, the far-right militia group whose members were present during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The roughly 5GB of data, provided by the hacker to the journalist and transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), contains everything from emails, internal chats, and details on the organization’s members and donors.
Among the 5GB of data is a folder titled "ak," which contains a hashed file that when opened reveals, among other information, an email sent less than a month after the Jan 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. The email, dated February 3, 2021, appears to have been sent to OathKeepers.org from the municipal email account of a current city employee.
The hostname associated with the IP address in the email appears to show that the email originated from: remote.muni.org.
The Blue Alaskan is withholding the name associated with the municipal email account pending a request for comment from the city, which was sent after the publication of this story.
According to the email contained in the DDoSecrets file, the author allegedly wrote to ak@oathkeepers.org that they had "paid to join Oathkeepers," had paid for some gear on the website, and asked whether anyone was able to tell them anything about those things.
The OathKeepers.org website describes itself as a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The group claims that the oath is mandated by Article VI of the Constitution itself and declares that they will not obey unconstitutional orders, such as orders to disarm the American people, to conduct warrantless searches, or to detain Americans as “enemy combatants.”
While Oath Keepers claim to defend the Constitution, the entire Oath Keepers organization is based on a set of conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy Americans’ liberties. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at least 18 members of the group have been arrested and face criminal charges for their activities.
The hack of the Oath Keeper Militia Group also includes the names of active NYPD officers. In response to the release of those names, NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio has launched an investigation into the matter.
According to a BuzzFeed News analysis, "the data includes membership lists, emails, and group chats and found more than 500 people associated with the organization who were identified in internal files as military or law enforcement personnel or whose email addresses indicated they may be or previously were employed by the military, state or local police, sheriff’s departments, or federal law enforcement."
This is a developing story and will be updated if and when additional information becomes available.
