Wikileaks Publishes Names, Addresses, Photos of ICE Agents
Following public heckling attacks against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Neilsen and White House aide Stephen Miller, both of whom are at the head of implementing President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy against illegal immigration, Wikileaks got involved by potentially endangering the lives of the men and women who enforce the law.
On Thursday the hacker group, which endeared itself to supporters of the president when it went after Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, drew ire from the pro-President Trump crowd when it published a database of names, address and photos of 900 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“This information is an important public resource for understanding ICE programs and increasing accountability, especially in light of the extreme actions taken by ICE lately, such as the separation of children and parents at the US border,” the group wrote in a tweet describing the data set.
The database was first created by Sam Lavigne, a New York based artist and computer programmer who was an adjunct professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the New School’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The Washington Post reported.
Lavigne first published the database, which he said he obtained by searching Linkedin profiles, on GitHub but the site removed his page.
He then attempted to publish it on the blogging site Medium, which also promptly removed the post.
“As ICE continues to ramp up its inhumane surveillance and detention efforts,” he wrote, “I believe it’s important to document what’s happening, and by whom, in any way we can. To that end, I’ve downloaded and made available the profiles of (almost) everyone on LinkedIn who works for ICE, 1595 people total. While I don’t have a precise idea of what should be done with this data set, I leave it here with the hope that researchers, journalists and activists will find it useful,” he wrote.
The data set remains available via Wikileaks.