Final week, a web site known as ICE Checklist went viral after its creators stated that that they had obtained what they described as a leak of non-public details about almost 4,500 Division of Homeland Safety workers. Nevertheless, a WIRED evaluation of the location discovered that the database depends closely on info 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 legislation.
ICE Checklist operates as a crowdsourced wiki maintained by volunteers, who’ve discretion over who’s added and what’s marked as “verified.” Like Wikipedia, with which it has no affiliation, ICE Checklist has class pages that characteristic 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 advised the Related Press shouldn’t be an ICE agent, is included within 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 known as the ICE Checklist web page disinformation.)
Dominick Skinner, the proprietor of ICE Checklist, says he doesn’t imagine that what ICE Checklist does is doxing. ICE Checklist doesn’t put up the house 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 somewhat ridiculous.”
WIRED reviewed people’ pages that had been included within the “Brokers” class on ICE Checklist as of January 22. Of the 1,580 pages, almost 90 % point out LinkedIn as a supply of knowledge, although a few of the hyperlinks cited now seem like damaged, and never all the hyperlinks help claims made on the wiki. (Somebody listed as “lively” on ICE Checklist could, for instance, have a LinkedIn depicting them as a former authorized advisor for ICE. On its About web page, ICE Checklist says that “errors could happen.”) Different linked profiles lack photographs and don’t seem like 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 court docket information.
Like different LinkedIn customers, those that self-identify as ICE deportation officers and different sorts of DHS workers are in lots of instances posting New Yr’s resolutions, reacting to meandering motivational posts concerning the which means of management, and letting individuals know they’re #opentowork.
The DHS didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Some people’ pages on the ICE Checklist 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 knowledge.
A spokesperson for OpenPayrolls wrote in an electronic mail that it has no affiliation with ICE Checklist and that the ICE-related payroll information on its website 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 obtained outreach from any authorities company expressing considerations relating to the show of public information on our transparency web site.”
SignalHire didn’t reply to a request for remark, but it surely additionally contains direct hyperlinks to the LinkedIn profiles of individuals representing themselves as ICE officers on its web site.
