Final week, a web site referred to as ICE Record went viral after its creators said that that they had acquired what they described as a leak of private information about practically 4,500 Department of Homeland Security workers. Nevertheless, a WIRED evaluation of the web site discovered that the database depends closely on information that obvious DHS workers have posted publicly on-line themselves. This comes at a time when DHS has characterised reporting on or publicizing the identification of ICE officers as “doxing” and has threatened to prosecute perceived offenders to the fullest extent of the regulation.
ICE Record operates as a crowdsourced wiki maintained by volunteers, who’ve discretion over who is added and what is marked as “verified.” Like Wikipedia, with which it has no affiliation, ICE Record has class pages that function a hyperlink to each web page included in that class. Not everybody on the record is an ICE worker and even affiliated with a federal company; former Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio, for instance, whom DHS told the Associated Press is not an ICE agent, is included in the wiki’s “Brokers” class. On his precise web page, his “Company” is listed as “N/A” and his “Position” is listed as “Propagandist; Agitator.” (Tarrio posted on X that he wished he labored for ICE, however referred to as the ICE Record web page disinformation.)
Dominick Skinner, the proprietor of ICE Record, says he does not consider that what ICE Record does is doxing. ICE Record doesn’t publish the dwelling addresses of recognized brokers, and says on its About web page that “false submissions, harassment, or makes an attempt to misuse the platform will likely be eliminated.”
“If this had been doxing, then we dox ourselves by merely being current in on-line environments,” Skinner says, “which is simply quite ridiculous.”
WIRED reviewed people’ pages that had been included in the “Brokers” class on ICE Record as of January 22. Of the 1,580 pages, practically 90 p.c point out LinkedIn as a supply of information, although a few of the hyperlinks cited now seem to be damaged, and not all of the hyperlinks assist claims made on the wiki. (Somebody listed as “lively” on ICE Record might, for instance, have a LinkedIn depicting them as a former authorized advisor for ICE. On its About web page, ICE Record says that “errors might happen.”) Different linked profiles lack pictures and don’t seem to be very lively. A few of the hyperlinks, nonetheless, seem to match federal immigration brokers who’ve beforehand been named in official ICE press releases and courtroom data.
Like different LinkedIn customers, those that self-identify as ICE deportation officers and different varieties of DHS workers are in lots of instances posting New 12 months’s resolutions, reacting to meandering motivational posts about the which means of management, and letting folks know they’re #opentowork.
The DHS did not reply to requests for remark.
Some people’ pages on the ICE Record wiki cite OpenPayrolls, a searchable database of public workers’ salaries that features some ICE workers, and SignalHire, an information dealer that focuses on lead era, as sources of information.
A spokesperson for OpenPayrolls wrote in an electronic mail that it has no affiliation with ICE Record and that the ICE-related payroll data on its web site had been launched by the US Workplace of Personnel Administration in response to a Freedom of Info Act request. The spokesperson additionally stated, “Up to now, now we have not acquired outreach from any authorities company expressing issues relating to the show of public data on our transparency web site.”
SignalHire did not reply to a request for remark, however it additionally consists of direct hyperlinks to the LinkedIn profiles of individuals representing themselves as ICE officers on its web site.
Disclaimer: This article is sourced from external platforms. OverBeta has not independently verified the information. Readers are advised to verify details before relying on them.
