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Know what Ferguson city needs right now? It's not Anonymous doxing random people

U-turn on vow to identify killer cop after fingering wrong bloke

Anonymous has called off efforts to name and shame the cop who shot unarmed teen Michael Brown dead in Ferguson, Missouri – after the hacktivists identified a bloke whom the police say has never worked as a beat officer.

On Thursday the group released the name and pictures from Facebook of a man they accused of shooting 18-year-old Brown, but the police say the hackers fingered the wrong man.

Brown's death last Saturday sparked four days of demonstrations in the city; the protest was broken up on Wednesday night by a highly militarized police force. Soon after the shooting, Anonymous wrongly claimed that a man named Bryan Willman is responsible for the teen's death.

That allegation prompted the St Louis County Police Department to issue the following tweet:

Willman's stepmother told USA Today that Willman had never been a serving officer and instead works as a police dispatcher. She said she is now in fear for her life after her address appeared online.

"I guess I'm going to have to sleep with my gun and put cameras on the house," she said. "Now I have to defend myself and I didn't do anything wrong."

The Anons' disclosure led Twitter to suspend the @TheAnonMessage account the group were using, although they have set up an alternative account @TheAnonMessage2, on which they posted a message that all doxing will stop for the moment.

The group hasn't shut up shop completely, however. Following a press statement threatening a hacking attack, the group released what they claim is the radio logs of the St Louis police department at the time of Brown's death, and say they also have video of his body being loaded into a police van.

Ferguson police are refusing to release the name of the police officer involved in Brown's shooting, or the autopsy report into his death. ®

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