The tension over the Trump administration’s family separation policy spread throughout social media this week, after Medium, GitHub and Twitter took down posts pointing to the personal details of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workers.
ICE is the organization responsible for enforcing the White House’s zero tolerance policy on immigrants crossing the Mexican border. That policy, announced 6 April, did not explicitly call for the separation of children from their families, but because the Justice Department cannot prosecute children along with their families, officials began separating them. The US government has been putting these separated children into camps. Approximately 2,300 immigrant children have been separated from their families since the policy began.
This week, outrage grew over the policy as journalists released recordings and photographs of traumatized children. Shocked by the escalation of the US government’s zero tolerance policy on illegal immigration, artist Sam Lavigne wrote a Python script to scrape the profiles of 1,595 ICE workers and put their information online.
Lavigne, who is also a professor at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), wrote a Medium post about his project. The post linked to a GitHub repository that contained the data, available in CSV and JSON formats, listing details such as name, photo and general location.
As ICE continues to ramp up its inhumane surveillance and detention efforts, I believe it’s important to document what’s happening, and by whom, in any way we can. 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.
Medium took down Lavigne’s post, reportedly because they felt that it was an example of doxxing, but both the Wayback Machine and Google have cached it.
The post contains a sample of the data and it links to the GitHub repository hosting both the full dataset and the Python script used to harvest it. GitHub has since taken the repository down, reportedly because it felt that the post violated its community guidelines. At the time of writing, Lavigne’s Twitter account was still active, although several other accounts that had been posting links to the information were suspended.
The doxxing didn’t stop here, extending further to White House staff. Gizmodo-owned political news site Splinter News upped the ante by publishing the phone number for Stephen Miller, the White House advisor credited with driving the zero-tolerance policy.
Splinter News pointed out that the President has publicly given out the phone numbers of political rival Lindsey Graham and Jorge Ramos, an anchor for Univision (which now owns Gizmodo Media Group, and, therefore, Splinter News). Univision ended its relationship with Trump’s Miss Universe Organization in 2015, citing the mogul’s insulting remarks about Mexican immigrants as a key factor.
Twitter has suspended several accounts that linked to the Miller story, even when they did not directly share the phone number in their posts. When suspending accounts that share private information, the social media site is following these rules, which explain that sharing such data could pose “serious safety and security risks”.
In light of the growing public pressure around the issue, Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday reversing the separation policy. However, the fate of the children that have already been separated remains unclear.
lollerSkates
Q predicted this
Pete in Seattle
The prez is just enforcing the law. People who don’t like it should get the law changed. Sooner or later media misrepresentation is going to get someone killed.
Wilderness
100% correct. The continual hyper-politicization of everything under the sun and the willingness to personally attack individuals is an extremely damaging trend to set.
Not Sure If Serious
So… when you say “just” you mean “selectively” right? Because otherwise you’re wrong on the facts.
If he is going to “just” enforce the law, perhaps he should also enforce the felonies committed by his son in law so we can take him seriously about the whole “just” enforcing the law thing? As the form Kushner repeatedly lied on states states: The U.S. Criminal Code (title 18, section 1001) provides that knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact is a felony which may result in fines and/or up to five (5) years imprisonment. Kushner has had to change his entries 40 times so far, which would indicate at least 39 different counts of this crime. Surely felonies are worth prosecuting and the President should demand the DOJ prosecute them? If he’s “just” going to enforce the law, I mean.
I assume you’ve been calling for POTUS to enforce those laws too? Or just the misdemeanors and violations committed by brown people?
mike@gmail.com
This isn’t a “Trump administration policy” this is a Federal Government policy that stood way before he was sworn into office. You guys really can’t write anything that touches the political thread without showing your biases can you?
The way you’ve framed this article, you seem to be insinuating that ICE is a legitimate target for some kind of resistance to what’s happening. Firstly, If people want this fixed they should call their representatives and demand an end to illegal immigration, and a fix for border security. Second, Mexican consular and diplomatic offices should be called upon to have Mexico do their part to secure their northern border and ensure the safety of minors and adults, by preventing them from attempting this illegal and dangerous crossing
And of course you finish your fine piece of propaganda by defending the actions of those putting the safety of men and women who protect the security and sanctity of a sovereign nation, that has the right to decide who may or may not enter, by highlighting that the other side has done the same.
Sophos. Naked Security blog staff.
This political BS needs to stop. Your biases have been showing for a long time now. You have personal opinions and beliefs, that’s great. Keep them out of the blog, that purports to be a news site, open up a separate editorial section, or start labeling these pieces as opinion if you can’t keep from injecting narrative into facts.
Mark Stockley
I stand by the article. I’m sorry that you think it displays bias, I do not. I think it is a description of the facts as they stand. For the avoidance of doubt, we do not condone doxxing or other forms of online bullying and I can’t see anywhere in the article that Danny suggests otherwise.
It is a fact that people have been doxxing ICE staff, and it is a fact that websites have been taking steps to prevent that.
As to whether it’s a policy, I think it’s fair to call it that, not least because Jeff Sessions himself announced this change on 6 April with the words “I have put in place a zero tolerance policy”.
What is long-standing is the law, and the law requires the separation of children from parents who are prosecuted. Danny explains in the article: “That policy, announced 6 April, did not explicitly call for the separation of children from their families, but because the Justice Department cannot prosecute children along with their families, officials began separating them.”
A decision was taken to change the way the law was enforced. Whether you think that change is a good thing or a bad thing it was a change, and it was announced as such. Saying so is not a display of bias.
Wilderness
“What is long-standing is the law, and the law requires the separation of children from parents who are prosecuted. Danny explains in the article: ‘That policy, announced 6 April, did not explicitly call for the separation of children from their families, but because the Justice Department cannot prosecute children along with their families, officials began separating them.'”
This.
Steve
“The tension over the Trump administration’s family separation policy…”
We can’t even get past the opening line of the article without a twisted version of the facts.
You acknowledge the separation policy is not a product of the current administration, but yet that opening line remains there glaring at us.
Danny Bradbury
To acknowledge, as I did in the story, that family separation is not explicitly written in Sessions’ policy, is factually accurate. To suggest, as you and others seem to here, that family separation is not an understood outcome of the zero tolerance policy and therefore part of its intent, is incorrect.
The White House and its agencies knew full well that a policy of prosecuting everyone crossing the border, including families, will have resulted in the separation of children from families to comply with Flores vs Reno. Indeed, the administration is known to have actively considered this consequence as it mulled departing from existing catch-and-release policies months before the fact.
I stand by every word in this story.
Danny Bradbury
Zero tolerance hasn’t been government policy since Streamline, when the Republican administration at the time chose to interpret the existing consent decree differently. None of this is actually the point of the story, which is why I didn’t go into more depth.
This is a story about doxxing and its pseudo-variants. Your statement that I ‘seem to be insinuating’ the targeting of ICE employees is subjective, and also incorrect. In no way am I suggesting that ICE workers are legitimate targets for doxxing. My personal views on Lavigne’s project would surprise you, but I intentionally left them out of the copy.
Not condemning something in reporting it is not bias. Stating the facts is not misrepresentation.
I stand by every word in this story.
Nobody_Holme
Danny’s work generally reads with a slight conservative bias to me, in all honesty. THIS reads as a piece the author knew would attract the trolls and ensured was plain, factual reporting in a highly professional way.
Which would be why Naked Security is generally a trusted source. It’s authors understand what bias is and how to minimize it’s impact.
(personally I’d have talked over why doxxing is never okay more, and sniped at Trump for doing it, but that’s why I’m not a journalist.)