Story By: Georgina Jadikovska, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash

The US Federal Court has filed charges against Swiss hackers who shared images from over 150,000 surveillance cameras in American prisons and hospitals on the internet.

The hacker collective ‘Advanced Persistent Threat 69420’ from the Swiss city of Lucerne, led by computer scientist Tillie Kottmann, 21, reportedly cracked Verkada Inc.’s security system and released video footage of various institutions online.

The team penetrated the security system of over 100 facilities including prisons, hospitals, schools, and even the company Tesla.

According to local media, the collective found ‘super admin’ credentials that gave them unrestricted access to Verkada’s systems.

However, Tillie Kottmann, who self identifies as non-binary and goes by the pronouns they/them, is currently accused of crimes dating back to 2019 where they supposedly targeted online code repositories known as ‘gits’ belonging to major private and public sector entities and shared them on a website they founded and maintained named git.rip.

In addition, the FBI already started investigations and seized control of Kottmann’s git.rip website. The Lucerne Canton Police on the other hand seized several electronic devices found in Kottmann’s apartment on March 12th.

The allegedly autistic suspect, as stated on their Instagram profile under the username @deletescape, said the team was led by various ideologies and “lots of curiosity, a huge dose of anti-capitalism, a hint of anarchism – and it’s also just too much fun not to do it”.

US authorities have a different viewpoint. Washington State prosecutor Tessa M. Gorman announced: “Stealing credentials and data, and publishing source code and proprietary and sensitive information on the web is not protected speech – it is theft and fraud.”

The US Department of Justice’s indictment listed several cyber-attacks and accused Kottmann and their accomplices of hacking dozens of companies and government organisations.

The indictment includes numerous tweets and messages as evidence which might earn Kottmann 20 years in prison.

It is unclear whether Kottmann, who is still in Lucerne, will be extradited to the US.

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