Louisville Cop Used Law Enforcement Database To Seek Female Targets To Hack For Sexually Explicit Content

A 2013 audit found more than half of Minnesota’s 11,000 law enforcement officers abused their access to driver data, with the most common abuses being searching for others with the same last name and “disproportionately searching for people of one sex.”

Lack of true oversight at the local level has led to federal charges against a (now former) Louisville police officer who abused his access to other people’s personal info to seek sexually explicit material with the apparent goal of blackmailing them. Here’s Josh Wood, reporting for LEO Weekly.

According to a sentencing memorandum, Bryan Wilson used his law enforcement access to Accurint, a powerful data-combing software used by police departments to assist in investigations, to obtain information about potential victims. He would then share that information with a hacker, who would hack into private Snapchat accounts to obtain sexually explicit photos and videos.

If sexually explicit material was obtained, Wilson would then contact the women, threatening to post the photos and videos online and share them with their friends, family, employer and co-workers unless more sexually explicit material was provided to him.

Accurint is a powerful database run by LexisNexis — one that contains millions of public records, court filings, licenses, addresses, phone numbers, and (as is most relevant here) social media data. That last chunk of information was integral to Officer Wilson’s scheme. The DOJ’s sentencing memorandum recounts one of Wilson’s conversation with a potential victim.

Read the full story at https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/19/louisville-cop-used-law-enforcement-...