A data breach has exposed sensitive details of over 40,000 DHS employees, including officials in surveillance and human intelligence roles.
Page A225From§Eachthe evening edition — 29 October 2026
THE THIRD BREACH
Group called the Department of Peace publishes names of 10,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents
As it ran on the front
A group calling itself the Department of Peace released the identities of more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees on Wednesday, among them the names of 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents. Surveillance programs. The particulars of undercover initiatives. All together now — line by line, the file reads like an organizational chart the agency never agreed to draw.
This is the third federal personnel disclosure in four weeks, and the three have nothing else in common. On 28 September, a group called ShinyHunters told the outlet 404 Media that it had obtained personnel records on every FBI employee, home addresses and spouses included, and had decided from the beginning never to publish any of it. Two days later, on 30 September, a Pentagon breach exposed Social Security numbers belonging to 2.76 million living Americans connected to the military; by 12 October the count under review had passed 3 million. Three agencies, three different kinds of trouble, inside the same four weeks.…
…(cont) The Guardian asked DHS for comment on the leak of its own staff's identities. DHS did not immediately return the message.
Set the two hacking cases side by side and the difference is not a motive, it is a decision. ShinyHunters had FBI employees' data and chose not to release it. The Department of Peace had DHS employees' data and did. Nothing here confirms that theory or refutes it. It confirms only that 41,000 personnel files are easier to find this week than they were last week, and that the agency whose employees they describe has, so far, had nothing to say about it.
“They've got ten thousand badge numbers loose on the internet and the agency's answer is silence — no statement, no deadline, nothing. That's the whole racket: spend years building files on everybody else, then act stunned when somebody builds one back on you.”
“This puts brave officers in the field at risk, full stop — wait, no, that's also what we said about the service members whose Social Security numbers the Pentagon lost in September, and the FBI staff whose data got stolen the week before that. How many departments is that now? Forget I said that — data security is a top priority going forward.”
Earlier in this story
- Justice Department calls ballot counting disenfranchisement, loses its bid to stop the count six days before the vote. By Lou · the evening edition, 29 October 2026
- Minecraft billionaire lists $70 million mansion seventeen days after Newsom endorsed a measure cancelling the billionaire tax By Sterling · the evening edition, 28 October 2026
The receipts
The Department of Homeland Security is investigating a breach that exposed roughly 40,000 employees, including 10,000 ICE agents and CBP personnel.
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Hackers expose the identities of more than 40,000 DHS employeesA group of hacktivists calling themselves Distributed Denial of Secrets, said the unmasking of ICE agents, DHS operatives and contractors was fair play, given the government's lack of transparency.
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Non-profit group leaks data of more than 40,000 homeland security workersInformation released by Distributed Denial of Secrets is the third such government data disclosure in the last month Data identifying more than 41,000 employees and contractors for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was released on Wednesday in an unprecedented leak that reveals how the agency is organized. The records, which…
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Details of thousands of US immigration agents leaked in major hackA group called the Department of Peace released information on more than 41,000 DHS staff.
· Pentagon data breach exposes Social Security numbers, personal info of 2.76M US military, civilian personnel from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Pentagon data breach exposes records of over 3M people from the morgue, 12 Oct 2026
· Social Security corrects death, citizenship information for millions of numbers from the morgue, 21 Oct 2026
· FBI Hackers Say They Won’t Publish Massive Trove of FBI Employee Data from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.