An activist uses PimEyes facial recognition to identify ICE officers, then finds home addresses through broker sites (August 2025)

What happened

In August 2025, Politico reported that an activist, Dominick Skinner, was using PimEyes to identify ICE officers from photos and video taken at enforcement operations. Skinner runs a project called ICE List that compiles agents' identities. PimEyes is a commercial facial recognition search engine. Anyone can upload a photo of a face and get back other photos of the same person found on the public internet.

According to the reporting, Skinner's team pulled images of masked officers from raid footage and used AI to generate an approximation of each unmasked face. Volunteers then ran those reconstructions through PimEyes, which matched them to public photos elsewhere on the web, including social media accounts, older news photos, and public profile pictures. The activist then ran the resulting names through public records and people-search sites to find current home addresses.

PimEyes disputes the unmasking description. The company says it is a search engine that compares visible parts of an uploaded photo to public images and does not reveal covered faces.

Senator Marsha Blackburn raised concerns in September 2025 and pressed PimEyes CEO Giorgi Gobronidze again in November 2025 over the company's role. As of that reporting, no criminal charges against the activist had been made public.

How it started

The chain uses two consumer tools. Facial recognition that searches the open web produces a name from a photo. People-search sites then turn that name into a current home address.

A mask at the scene does not close the first step if unmasked photos of you exist somewhere. A wedding photo, a department team picture, or a photo posted by a relative on a public profile can be enough for a match. Once a face matches a name, the broker pages do the rest.

Neither step needs an insider, a leak, or a hack. Both tools are sold to the public.

Why this case matters

The chain turns a public moment, being on scene at an enforcement action, into a name and a home address in a short time. The technology is marketed and sold to consumers, and there is no legal mechanism that takes the face-match step off the table.

The step you can control is the second one. Once someone has your name, the home-address lookup runs through people-search and data-broker pages. Those listings can be removed.

What this means for you

If you are an ICE agent, Border Patrol officer, or any sworn federal officer whose face appears in public, treat identification as possible. The practical question is what someone can do once they have your name.

Federal officers have no broad federal privacy statute of their own. Federal judges do: the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act lets a covered judge demand that data brokers delete their home address and other personal information, gives brokers 72 hours to comply, and allows a civil suit if they refuse. New Jersey's Daniel's Law gives covered state judges, prosecutors, and officers the same kind of takedown demand against brokers, backed by statutory damages, but whether it reaches federal officers varies by case. Neither law is written for a rank-and-file federal agent. What closes the second step regardless of jurisdiction is removing your name and home address from the broker pages. Frontline Privacy files those removals and keeps checking for listings that come back.

For more on facial-recognition exposure and the broker sites that complete the chain, see social media OSINT and our data broker overview.