After teasing the drop like a cat owner dangling a toy mouse, hacktivist group Anonymous posted a list of people who were allegedly active members of the Ku Klux Klan yesterday.
The list went up with a lengthy disclaimer on Pastebin, the same message-posting service where they announced this stage of what they call "Operation KKK" or "#OpKKK."
OFFICIAL #OpKKK #HoodsOff 2015 Data Release. https://t.co/EQODjs7wpA With Love, Anonymous
— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) November 5, 2015
But the list wasn’t what they’d teased. Instead of 1,000 names, the group posted a few hundred. Additionally, as noted by the Washington Post and the Daily Dot, many of the people listed are already known to the public, such as Don Black, founder of white supremacist website Stormfront. Others may have been working under aliases with their "true identities" not being totally revealed.
VICE pointed out one error on the list—Ben Garrison, a libertarian cartoonist who had his work altered to include anti-Semitic imagery in a 4Chan attack a few years ago. Garrison told the Post that he is not a white supremacist, and that the 4Chan attack "ruin[ed] my online reputation as well as my commercial art business."
Anonymous, for their part, claimed that they wanted a smaller list so that they did not make any mistakes. They also apologized to people whom they couldn’t confirm as Klan members and to Garrison.
We removed several names from our list for further investigation. We would rather have a smaller, accurate list that we are comfortable with
— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) November 5, 2015
Ben made an awkward, brief appearance in our release. He should not have been listed. We were surprised, as well…
— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) November 6, 2015
(H/t Washington Post, Daily Dot, VICE)