Unlike other victims, Judge Forrest's Social Security Number was posted in full, for free, on baphomet. This is likely in retatilation for her presiding over the Silk Road Case. The defendant in that matter, Ross Ulbricht, was found guilty of running the Silk Road online marketplace last week; an online bazaar notorious for trading illegal drugs for bitcoins. (Correction: no weapons were sold on the silk road.) It's estimated Ulbricht generated 88 million USD in commissions from this illegal trade. Now convicted, Ulbricht faces life in prison.

How can I be so sure that Forrest was targeted because of her involvement in the Silk Road case? Simple. The anon who doxed her included a link to Ulbricht's official legal defense fund. But even if there wasn't a smoking gun, 8chan is operating in the same legal gray area as the Silk Road and the Pirate Bay used to do. 8chan hosts illegal content (most famously child pornography) citing the unconvincing argument that their actions are always protected speech under the First Amendment.

Forrest was not the only person in law enforcement who was doxed. During the recent string of doxings, another anon posted the information of 40 Boston PD police officers, starting with the superintendent. This included private information, such as their addresses and personal cell phone numbers.

Baphomet exists to dox, harass, and intimidate critics of gamergate. Its owner, Benjamin Biddix, is an avowed gamergate-r. He posted the bulk of the SSNs and even taught his fellow users how to phish for CC and Debit Card numbers and obtain SSNs from there.

Biddix began selling SSNs on 02/05/2015, at one point offering to "dox for hire", including SSNs, for prices ranging from 5-200 USD. Biddix claimed to be doing this because he is homeless and desperate for money. At the time of this writing he is trying to leave the country and settle in China, where he believes he will not face repercussions for his activities.

Fredrick Brennan, the administrator of 8chan publicly told Biddix to knock it off on 02/09/2015, after receiving repeat complaints about the posting of SSNs on the board. Essentially, Brennan admitted that criminal identity theft had been running rampant for two days and threatened to reassign Biddix's board if it did not stop.

Biddix updated his rule set, directing anyone who wanted to continue posting SSNs and bank info (and other illegal content) to do so via Tor.



"Recorse for all of your SSN, CC numbers and naughty needs( barely legals and such ) can be found below

[Link to pastebin redacted]

No doxes or raids are to be removed from this board, if you see yourself here feel free to bitch somewhere else. ssns are removed now due to HW request, If you have them, link in Ghostbin or .onion's dox bin it's all legal. No laws are broken on baphomet what so ever. If illegal content is posted it is deleted by one of the many mods."

"Our Tor and bunker are now finished, feel free to do "other" activities there so we don't get HW in any legal trouble!"

However by the following morning (02/09/2015), the entire board had been wiped, and the rules changed again to a moderator's more oblique wording Baphomet was also removed from 8chan's master directory, as if Brennan is trying to sweep what happened there under the rug. The mods had no idea what happened, and Biddix claimed that he had been hacked . Considering that the unlisting and wipe happened simultaneously, I suspect the board was wiped by Brennan himself in order to purge the evidence of illegal identity theft from his servers. Brennan used the same strategy after Dan Olson exposed the child pornography on 8chan, deleting seven of the worst-offending forums but leaving others.

There is a way to know, however. Brennan keeps a list of all moderations made to his web site: who, what changes were made, when, and what IP the moderator was posting from. (As per his "Privacy Policy".) Fredrick Brennan also would know the IPs which Biddix has been posting from, which could lead law enforcement to Biddix's physical location (he claims to have left the US.)

All it needs is a warrant. Would obtaining one in this case be difficult?

Edited: Added a photo of the BPD Officer doxing and added it to the headline.