A Chicago judge was tricked into censoring the face of an ICE agent's photo from a public court record because his personal info was easily available online.
In October, Juan Espinoza Martinez had been acquitted on murder-for-hire charges against Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino but federal prosecutors wanted to use this acquittal in another case to prove that doxing - which means publicly releasing someone's personal information without their consent - is a serious threat for immigration officials. To make the court proceedings more secure, government lawyers asked Judge Sara Ellis to have a courtroom sketch artist blur the face of ICE Deputy Field Office Director Shawn Byers.
Byers was a senior ICE agent in Chicago who had taken precautions to limit his online presence after he said someone Googled him and discovered his LinkedIn profile with photos and info on how to get in touch with him. When Byers claimed that someone had issued a $50,000 bounty against him due to his job and location, Judge Ellis wanted to obscure his identity for "protective reasons."
In October, Juan Espinoza Martinez had been acquitted on murder-for-hire charges against Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino but federal prosecutors wanted to use this acquittal in another case to prove that doxing - which means publicly releasing someone's personal information without their consent - is a serious threat for immigration officials. To make the court proceedings more secure, government lawyers asked Judge Sara Ellis to have a courtroom sketch artist blur the face of ICE Deputy Field Office Director Shawn Byers.
Byers was a senior ICE agent in Chicago who had taken precautions to limit his online presence after he said someone Googled him and discovered his LinkedIn profile with photos and info on how to get in touch with him. When Byers claimed that someone had issued a $50,000 bounty against him due to his job and location, Judge Ellis wanted to obscure his identity for "protective reasons."
How hard is it to just take some basic precautions like changing your social media settings or using a VPN? It sounds like Shawn Byers was basically begging to have his face censored. And what's with the $50k bounty claim, anyway? Is that some kind of inside joke I'm not getting? 
It's just so easy for people like him to hide behind "protective reasons" when they're really just being careless about their online presence... 
. Like, I get it, protecting the agents' identities is super important, but can't they just use a different tactic? A courtroom sketch artist would've been fine, right? 
Why make everyone in the courtroom anonymous too? And btw, if someone's gonna release personal info online without consent, that's doxing 
- isn't that what they're trying to prevent? Not using his face in public record just hides a problem from view. We need more transparency here! 
. And now a judge has to go around censoring people's faces from public records just because they're worried about being doxed? It's so... frustrating 
. I swear, if we can't even trust our own agency when it comes to protecting our online presence, how are we supposed to trust the government with sensitive info 
by the gov! so they wanna use doxing as an example to scare immigration officials? meanwhile, it's like they're hiding something 
. why did ICE Deputy Field Office Director Shawn Byers have to get his face blurred? didn't he know that info was already out there online? seems fishy... what's really going on with this whole thing? 
. And now we're paying the price because of a judge who got played by the other side 
. I feel like the ICE agent was right to try and limit his online presence in the first place - it's not fair that he's being punished for trying to protect himself 
. This whole thing just feels like another example of how our personal info can be used against us if we're not careful 
.
. And yeah, if you're a public official, you gotta take responsibility for keeping your own info private 
#DoxingIsReal #OnlineSecurityMatters #PublicFiguresGetItTogether
. I guess when you're in law enforcement, you have to be more vigilant than that. This whole thing is a perfect example of how easily information can be manipulated and used against people. 
and $50k bounty?? thats just a red flag right now.