"Why hack the DHS? I can think of a couple Pretti Good reasons!"

Today, DDoSecrets published data about ICE contracts hacked from DHS's Office of Industry Partnership. The hacker group, Department of Peace, published a statement that included:

Why hack the DHS? I can think of a couple Pretti Good reasons! I'm releasing this because the DHS is killing us and people deserve to know which companies support them and what they're working on.

ICE agents recently murdered both Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minneapolis. The Trump administration is engaged in a conspiracy to protect the murderers, who remain free.

You can find the raw data on the DDoSecrets data server. It's two files, dhs_contractors.json (13.4mb) and dhs_contracts.json (3.6mb).

I downloaded it and wanted to see what contractors are in California. But huge JSON files are annoying to search, so I made a little static website called DHS Contracts Explorer to more easily visualize it.

I haven't spent a lot of time yet looking at actual data, but I wanted to point out the first thing I noticed. The largest contract in the data is for $70,000,000! Seventy Million Dollars. It's for a company called Cyber Apex Solutions, LLC.

The contract was awarded March 31, 2017 (the beginning of Trump's first term) and ended March 31, 2022. If you look at the company details, the contact is Cyber Apex Solutions CEO Justin AW Taft, with the email address jaw_t@hotmail.com. Yes, he is using his Hotmail account for this.

Any company that enters into a contract with ICE, especially during Trump's second term, is morally bankrupt and in a just would would be driven out of business. I hope this data, at the very least, contributes to local pressure campaign's against DHS contractors and convinces them to drop their contracts.