Hackers from the hacker collective Anonymous have released a considerable-sized trove of data it claims is hacked from the United States Department of Justice.

In an announcement on AnonNews .Org – a site which bills itself as “an independent and uncensored (but moderated) news platform for Anonymous” – the hackers said: “Today we are releaseing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.”

“We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information,” Anonymous announced.

“We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free,” they added.

The data released by Anonymous seems authentic as the DOJ has confirmed with ZDNet that there was a breach in their systems.

The DOJ said through a spokesperson that “The department is looking into the unauthorized access of a website server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that contained data from their public website.”

“The Bureau of Justice Statistics website has remained operational throughout this time. The department’s main website, justice.gov, was not affected,” the spokesperson added.

Anonymous has been steadily hacking into websites and databases of organizations they are against.

At the end of January, they hacked into the Irish government sites as protest for the government’s move to enact laws concerning copyright.

By February, Anonymous claimed to have taken down the website of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Through a tweet then on the @YourAnonNews account which is used by Anonymous to disseminate information, the hacker collective announced “CIA Tango down”.

Back in January, the site also attacked the websites of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation as retaliation for the shutdown of the file-sharing site MegaUpload.

This April, Anonymous also attacked the British Home Office website as retaliation for an alleged move by the government to allow authorities to snoop on people’s emails.

Meanwhile, Anonymous seems to realize that their hacking are landing them in jail as they said that “The price we pay very often is our own freedom. The price governments pay is the exposure of their corruption and the truth being revealed, for the truth will set us free in the end.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oEo3OC75yY#!

Image from raincoaster on Flickr (CC)

About Solon Harmony Dolor

A passion for technology and journalism makes this upcoming writer very interested in social media and technology news. Fresh from finishing an English and Journalism degree from the University of the Philippines Diliman, he aims to bring interesting news to our readers .