A Twitter account from online "hacktivist" group Anonymous was suspended on Thursday after it claimed to reveal the name of the police officer who shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown. The shooting set off five nights of unrest in the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. Chief Angel Jimenez of the St. Ann Police Department in Missouri told NBC News that the person named by Anonymous "is a dispatcher, not a police officer, and at no time has he ever been involved in a shooting in Ferguson or elsewhere." Twitter told NBC News that it does not "comment on individual accounts," but pointed to its Twitter rules, which state that users can not "publish or post other people's private and confidential information" or "publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others." Anonymous has already started tweeting about the situation in Ferguson from a second Twitter account, @TheAnonMessage2.
IN-DEPTH
- Ferguson Mayor Defends Police Reaction to Michael Brown Protests
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