Anonymous calls for Trump's impeachment, leaks private contact details of 22 GOP senators

Hacktivist collective Anonymous has reportedly leaked the private contact details of 22 GOP senators, in the wake of the Charlottesville violence and US President Donald Trump's controversial response to the event. The operator of a Twitter account, allegedly connected to the hacktivist group, has claimed to have leaked the private phone numbers and email addresses of 22 Republican members of Congress in a bid to push for Trump's impeachment.

It is unclear how the leaked data was obtained and whether the information published came from the publicly available content or from a hacked database. The lawmakers whose personal data was reportedly leaked included senators Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.

The information was posted on Twitter by the user of the account @TheAnonJournal. Rob Pfeiffer, chief editor of the online publication The Anon Journal, told The Washington Post that the information was gathered by a group known as "AnonOps." Pfeiffer claimed to not know how the information was obtained, adding that some of the phone numbers included in the leak had been verified.

The leak is aimed at urging people to call on these lawmakers to condemn Trump and his comments and push for the president's impeachment, The Washington Post cited Pfeiffer as saying.

The latest move comes on top of Anonymous' recent OpDomesticTerrorism campaign, which saw the hacktivist collective take down the Charlottesville city website as a sign of protest with a targeted DDoS attack. However, the recent leak appears to be unrelated the OpDomesticTerrorism campaign.

In the wake of Charlottesville, tech giants such as Google, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Facebook, Apple and others have come together to denounce the event. The US tech sector also banded together to take the neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer, offline after the site published an article mocking Heather Heyer, the victim of a hit and run incident that occurred during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Despite the site's attempt to move to the dark web, it again came under attack, after an unknown hacker launched a DDoS attack against the Daily Stormer's dark web site.

The crack down on hate groups has continued since Charlottesville.

Meanwhile, Anonymous' activities saw a massive surge in the wake of the Charlottesville violence. The group has recently vowed to ramp up cyberattacks against white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites. The group also recently called for a nationwide protest dubbed "Day to Denounce" that is slated to take place on 18 August.