Congressman confronts FBI over “egregious” unlawful search of his personal data

Section 702 unlikely to be reauthorized without reforms to protect US citizens.

See full article...

 

[TheShark]

I kind of wish someone would play the villan in this arena. Collect data on important people and do something socially bad but perfectly legal. Then tell the the people who complain to put up or shut up. Maybe if you embarrassed or anger anough people this way something will happen? Idk, guess there is too much money to be made for people to risk this strategy

Sounds like a plan. Unfortnately, it's an expensive plan. Yesterdays article on the FBI buying location data got me thinking. You can buy feeds of location data, much of it coming from phone apps. With that you should be able to find location history of people who work somewhere. From what I can gather, some of those feeds include the IP address of the reporting device. So I can go to a second company and buy web browsing feeds. Which also sometimes include the reporting IP address. A little cross-correlation should provide a nice summary of the browsing habits of most people who work at a particular place. And of course they all go home at night, so tie in feeds of address geolocations and property ownership records. That'll help identify which individuals go with each web browsing history. Bonus points if you can find any record of spending a few hours but not the whole night at a hotel. Wrap it all up in a pretty web front end and advertise it with slogans like "How does your congressman spend their time?"

How is this not already a thing? Given the total lack of regulation around the data broker business, what exactly stops someone from doing this? The expense is probably a big part of it. The few details I could find about pricing makes it sound like these feeds are at least $5K/month, and maybe a lot more (unsurprisingly details are scarce. "Call for a quote" is the most common price). If you need multiple feeds, plus probably a fair amount of compute to process it, it's probably a million dollars per year project or more. You'll probably want to have some good lawyers on retainer as well, because legal or not I would expect some fallout. It's not something I'm going to do, but I would expect that every intelligence service out there has done it.

But back on topic, no matter how little trust you have in the FBI you should probably have even less trust for all the other actors that can buy access to some of this data.

 

[shelbystripes]

As I keep saying, privacy from the government should be a real thing that people really care about.

If it takes turning the unchecked tracking of Americans on a Republican congressman for Republicans to care about it, then good, I’m glad it happened.

Not because I want his privacy to be invaded. Because the government is already invading our privacy. And this is what it takes for Congress to see what an issue it is, apparently.

 

[cesspoolcreature]

As a non-US citizen, I ask: "why is it such a big problem to have the FBI do these things to US citizens, but it is OK for them to do foreigners?"

If it is fine to probe all of us without discretion, why is it horrible if they do they same to you?

Because your own government is in a unique position of power over you. I'm sure China and Russia are spying on our Internet traffic too, but if those guys figure out that I have, say, sold a guy magic mushrooms on the darkweb, nothing bad happens to me. If the American government discovers it, I go to jail. Besides, we have the Bill of Rights--rightfully--so baked into our national identity and our concept of what we like about living in America, that it feels like an extra bad betrayal when our government is caught violating it.

Also, as much as cries about the threat posed by foreign terrorism is used as an excuse for this kind of behavior, you do need to accept that a modern nation has legitimate reasons to do some spying, and hopefully they're at least occasionally using this information to track foreign terrorists and thwart their plots against us or our allies, which is what we're ostensibly paying them to do. Cynical as it sounds, it's right for a government to treat the privacy of its own citizens with more respect than that of anyone else.

 

[shelbystripes]

Sounds like a plan. Unfortnately, it's an expensive plan. Yesterdays article on the FBI buying location data got me thinking. You can buy feeds of location data, much of it coming from phone apps. With that you should be able to find location history of people who work somewhere. From what I can gather, some of those feeds include the IP address of the reporting device. So I can go to a second company and buy web browsing feeds. Which also sometimes include the reporting IP address. A little cross-correlation should provide a nice summary of the browsing habits of most people who work at a particular place. And of course they all go home at night, so tie in feeds of address geolocations and property ownership records. That'll help identify which individuals go with each web browsing history. Bonus points if you can find any record of spending a few hours but not the whole night at a hotel. Wrap it all up in a pretty web front end and advertise it with slogans like "How does your congressman spend their time?"

How is this not already a thing? Given the total lack of regulation around the data broker business, what exactly stops someone from doing this?

Up to that last part, this already is happening.

All that data is being purchased and aggregated and formed into a detailed picture about you.

It’s called “surveillance advertising” by more and more people for a reason.

There are two reasons they don’t do that last part, and sell direct identifiable access to an amalgamation of someone’s digital (and in some cases offline) life directly.

The first is that they want to maintain the fiction that what they’re doing is anonymized enough that people shouldn’t worry about them just doing it to show you personalized ads.

The second is that giving up that much information on an individual is selling the golden goose. The most successful and comprehensive data aggregators, are the ones making the most money off personalized ad placements created with that data. If they sell the data, someone can use it to compete with their ad platform.

You’re basically asking, “Why doesn’t Facebook sell Facebook profiles in bulk?”

It’s not because Facebook gives a shit about your privacy, it’s because Facebook doesn’t want to feed their competition their biggest advantage.

 

[jwbaker]

I read the 702 compliance report and most of it is not that disturbing to me. It sounds like internal oversight has broad coverage, and the report indicates that every improper use was followed up on in some way. Many of the so-called abuses sound like legitimate mistakes, the kinds of things that are actually UX deficiencies that are fixable.
To me, the most interesting thing here is that LaHood is associated with a foreign influence investigation. When we are "investigating the investigators" we should be extremely skeptical about why we are doing that and who stands to benefit.

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

As a non-US citizen, I ask: "why is it such a big problem to have the FBI do these things to US citizens, but it is OK for them to do foreigners?"

If it is fine to probe all of us without discretion, why is it horrible if they do they same to you?

Because you’re foreigners and not entitled to constitutional protections, basically. Personally, I disagree with that; the constitutional amendments involved refer only to persons, not citizens, and the underlying philosophy behind the constitution and the enumerated rights is that they are universal human rights and the government is enjoined from violating those rights. I don’t see how it applies any less to people outside our borders than it does within them, but our legal system and much of the populace would disagree with me.

 

[BraveSirRobin85]

What a bunch of partisan assholes in this thread. Most of them had probably never heard of Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) before this story. If there has been a typo and it read "Rep. Darin LaHood (D-Ill.)" it would be guaranteed that the contents of the comments would have been much different.

I live in Lahood's district. He signed on in support of the Texas lawsuit to throw out the 2020 election results of several states. He is an enemy to democracy.

 

[Statistical]

As I keep saying, privacy from the government should be a real thing that people really care about.

If it takes turning the unchecked tracking of Americans on a Republican congressman for Republicans to care about it, then good, I’m glad it happened.

Not because I want his privacy to be invaded. Because the government is already invading our privacy. And this is what it takes for Congress to see what an issue it is, apparently.

However it isn't turning them around. The Republican in question thinks it is great for the government to spy on nobodies like you and me. It is just an outrage that "sensitive" important people like him got spied on.

The irony is that unlike you and me this guy supported a movement to overthrow the legitimately elected government and so maybe should have been investigated (although IMHO with a warrant). However if he gets his way insurrectionists like him will be off limits and endless warrantless unsupervised spying on normal losers like us will still be ok.

So I can't see any of this as a good thing.

 

[jwbaker]

However it isn't turning them around. The Republican in question thinks it is great for the government to spy on nobodies like you and me. It is just an outrage that "sensitive" important people like him got spied on.

The irony is that unlike you and me this guy supported a movement to overthrow the legitimately elected government and so maybe should have been investigated (although IMHO with a warrant). However if he gets his way insurrectionists like him will be off limits and endless warrantless unsupervised spying on normal losers like us will still be ok.

So I can't see any of this as a good thing.

The report says it was in early 2020 so it was before he tried to overthrow the elected government of the United States. He's probably just a run-of-the-mill Kremlin stooge.

 

[shelbystripes]

However it isn't turning them around. The Republican in question thinks it is great for the government to spy on nobodies like you and me. It is just an outrage that "sensitive" important people like him got spied on.

The irony is that unlike you and me this guy supported a movement to overthrow the legitimately elected government and so maybe should have been investigated (although IMHO with a warrant). However if he gets his way insurrectionists like him will be off limits and endless warrantless unsupervised spying on normal losers like us will still be ok.

So I can't see any of this as a good thing.

I don’t want to agree with you, but I can’t see one damn spot where you’re wrong.

 

[shelbystripes]

What a bunch of partisan assholes in this thread. Most of them had probably never heard of Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) before this story. If there has been a typo and it read "Rep. Darin LaHood (D-Ill.)" it would be guaranteed that the contents of the comments would have been much different.

You’re an inattentive fool, if you actually believe your own garbage claim that it’s the (D) or (R) that people care about, not the pro-insurrectionist stance of the congressman.

But I’m pretty sure you actually do pay attention, which means you’re an unashamed liar. Do you still take rubles as payment, even with the Russian economy crashing so hard?

 

[Death_wish01]

I think I remember saying the FBI/NSA had too much power that would have made a GOP blush. that was during the time of Edward Snowden. congress did vary little to rain in the triple letter agencies. fast forward 10 years, and it finally took them to actually look at it when 1: they got in trouble. 2: when trying to cover up evidence. man, how fast the issue changes when a member of congress is under the watchful eye of justice.

 

[shelbystripes]

The report says it was in early 2020 so it was before he tried to overthrow the elected government of the United States.

The coup attempt was happening in slow motion over at least a year. By early 2020 they were already working on trying to ban mail-in voting, and working on their propaganda and plan to undermine the legitimacy of voting results in places that allowed it, for just one example.

Maybe you think the first half of that isn’t a coup attempt, but the second half sure as hell is. And with the benefit of hindsight, it’s obvious I was right back then when I started calling a spade a spade.

 

[arnoud_h]

Because your own government is in a unique position of power over you.

No no no. I asked why there should be any difference between the US government (yes I know, the FBI is not the government, but you get my point...) evesdropping on citizens or foreigners. The question is not about my goverment.

I am an average joe in just another western civilization. Why is it OK if any US agency would spy on me, but it is not OK if that agency does the same to a US citizen. Yes, I know, the Constitution. But really, why should there be that distinction? In my opinion, I should have the same rights and protections as you.

 

[Areader]

Fascist1: Adhering to the constitution, treaties, and federal law can be so inconvenient.

Fascist2: Hey, lets create a secret kangaroo court that rubber stamps our extra-legal activities! Just utter the magic words "national security" and all laws are suspended so you can do whatever you want with complete privacy and no consequences! What could possibly go wrong?

... 1 Ed Snowden later...

Fascist1: Hey! What are you doing spying on me? You have no right! What about my privacy?

Fascist2: Oh hey, sorry about that. I double dog promise not abuse the power in the future. You shouldn't actually change the law though, because, ya know, National Security! (... doubles down on spying on political enemies).


--------------------------------------------------------
The FISA court spits in the eye of the rule of law and constitutional due process.
It makes a liar of the US as we betray the trust of our allies and citizens.
Power without real oversight and consequences for abuse will always yield corruption.

 

[cesspoolcreature]

No no no. I asked why there should be any difference between the US government (yes I know, the FBI is not the government, but you get my point...) evesdropping on citizens or foreigners. The question is not about my goverment.

I am an average joe in just another western civilization. Why is it OK if any US agency would spy on me, but it is not OK if that agency does the same to a US citizen. Yes, I know, the Constitution. But really, why should there be that distinction? In my opinion, I should have the same rights and protections as you.

That's what I mean. Everyone should be more concerned about their own government than any other agency, institution, or group of people in the world. You shouldn't care as much about the FBI spying on you, because what are they gonna do? Unless you're being investigated for a crime committed in America, in which case they could in theory send your government an extradition request and eventually get you in custody, but that's a much smaller level of danger. The FBI's info on me could hold my activities up to scrutiny against every obscure, bad or unjust law in the United States, and I sometimes break a few.

For the same reason, I don't care if your government is spying on me as much. Again, barring an extradition request if I'm accused of committing a crime in your country, what are they gonna do? The spy agencies of France or Spain or whatever can read through all my browsing history for all the shits I give, they don't have power over me except in some really specific circumstances.

It feels weird that I have to say this, because it's kind of in the definition of what a state is, but a state has special rights and responsibilities regarding its own citizens that do not apply to all the other human beings on Earth. It has the power to fine, imprison, and in some cases kill them for reasons it comes up with on its own, but on the other hand it has an obligation to protect them, serve in their interests, and respect the rights assigned to them in its Constitution--the basically sacred contract between a government and its people. At least, that's how these things are supposed to work.

 

[Fatesrider]

Ah finally, now it's a problem.

Funny how those draconian, repressive laws to invade the privacy of other people are suddenly deemed "bad" when it's invading the privacy of the people who created the laws in the first place, huh?

 

[TheShark]

Up to that last part, this already is happening.

All that data is being purchased and aggregated and formed into a detailed picture about you.

It’s called “surveillance advertising” by more and more people for a reason.

There are two reasons they don’t do that last part, and sell direct identifiable access to an amalgamation of someone’s digital (and in some cases offline) life directly.

The first is that they want to maintain the fiction that what they’re doing is anonymized enough that people shouldn’t worry about them just doing it to show you personalized ads.

The second is that giving up that much information on an individual is selling the golden goose. The most successful and comprehensive data aggregators, are the ones making the most money off personalized ad placements created with that data. If they sell the data, someone can use it to compete with their ad platform.

You’re basically asking, “Why doesn’t Facebook sell Facebook profiles in bulk?”

It’s not because Facebook gives a shit about your privacy, it’s because Facebook doesn’t want to feed their competition their biggest advantage.

This sure looks like unaggregated browsing data to me. They claim 400 billion records. And this sure looks like unaggregated location data, coming from 700 million active devices monthly.

FB is FB. Yeah, they collect their own data and don't share it directly. It's one company. But for all the other data, there is no singular "they". It's dozens and dozens of companies collecting, buying, selling, aggregating, trading, etc etc etc. I agree with your first reason that the data brokers want to maintain the fiction that it's all anonymous aggregated data. Keeping what they are doing hidden from the general public is key to keeping the whole business going.

I don't agree with the second one. The successful data aggregators building up marketing profiles aren't doing it with data they collected themselves by and large. They buy that data from a bunch of other companies who are probably in turn buying it from others. It's a whole ecosystem. And given its so many independent companies I'm amazed that they have managed to keep the scale of the raw data that's available hidden.

 

[Pariah]

It is not a stretch now a days to suspect a republican of being either a traitor, a terrorist or both.

 

[shelbystripes]

Funny how those draconian, repressive laws to invade the privacy of other people are suddenly deemed "bad" when it's invading the privacy of the people who created the laws in the first place, huh?

“How dare you turn on me! You wouldn’t exist without me! I made you and I can un-make you!”

Actually you can explain most Republicans pretty well by analogy to abusive relatives. Sigh.

 

[DrBruceBanner]

There should be a law requiring all politicians and public servants to be considered "under oath" when speaking as representatives of their position. Instead these guys lie so much it requires a federal investigation or lawsuit to learn the truth.

 

[graylshaped]

From the report:
https://www.intelligence.gov/assets...h-Joint-Assessment-of-FISA-702-Compliance.pdf

That seems to suggest they weren't necessarily looking for info on LaHood himself, but maybe something regarding LaHood, but made overly broad searches that likely returned personal information about LaHood himself. So it's just overall sloppiness, instead of maliciousness, if you believe this report.

Also, some info on what the "707 Report" referenced is:

Ah, so this was uinitiated under a republican administrattion...

 

[graylshaped]

Turns out it is hard to not double quote a post.

I have to focus to make sure I click "edit" rather than "quote," to not reply to myself, whiuch is awkward.

 

[graylshaped]

As I keep saying, privacy from the government should be a real thing that people really care about.

If it takes turning the unchecked tracking of Americans on a Republican congressman for Republicans to care about it, then good, I’m glad it happened.

Not because I want his privacy to be invaded. Because the government is already invading our privacy. And this is what it takes for Congress to see what an issue it is, apparently.

Many people in these forums have suggested the same: it doesn't matter to the GOP if it doesn't touch them. I support a reconcilation that closes the loophole. Lahood doesn't have the clout to convince the rest of his party, methinks.

 

[Mrbonk]

I think you're giving Trump a little too much credit, the division has been there for decades. At this point if you're still a Republican you tacitly approve of every atrocity they commit.

To some R I know, being a R and voting for R is still to them the "lesser" of two evils. While they claim places like CA and Ds do things like cut off their own hands to spite their face. /Shrug

 

[marsilies]

I kind of wish someone would play the villan in this arena. Collect data on important people and do something socially bad but perfectly legal. Then tell the the people who complain to put up or shut up. Maybe if you embarrassed or anger anough people this way something will happen? Idk, guess there is too much money to be made for people to risk this strategy

Last Week with John Oliver got pretty close once, when they bought data for specific types of DC residents off a data broker. See 21:25 mark

View: https://youtu.be/wqn3gR1WTcA?t=1285


I think John went as far as HBO's lawyers were comfortable with.

 

[orwelldesign]

I stopped shopping at a particular grocery chain because in order to have one of their "rewards" card you have to provide them your SS#. WTF? I don't give out my number or email. One of the things that amazes me is the dumbfounded looks and confused questions you get when you say you don't want to provide your info. It's like person asking has never considered someone might NOT want to provide personal info.

Prior to 9/11 Americans liked to pretend we were against surveillance...but when corporations (not the government) came and offered to put internet-connected devices with cameras and microphones that knew your credit card numbers, browsing history, purchase history, email contacts, etc....we collectively not only willingly put the device in our home, we PAID for the privilege to do so.

Failure to teach critical thinking in American schools has had a lot of negative consequences.

Yeah, that's the one thing Orwell got wrong. In 1984, the government/IngSoc paid for the Telescreens. We, though, we're happy to pay ~$40 a month for the privilege of carrying a constant surveillance device.

The privilege.

We asked for this and we got exactly what we asked for.

(I am now at a point in my life where someone surveiling me would be bored to death and I'd be maybe guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but, uh, that wasn't always the case. There's a lot -- a DAMN lot of people who don't understand the surveillance state and still do crime with their phones on them, or their GPS cars, which reflects poorly on every involved party.)

 

[klarg]

So if it becomes illegal for US agencies to gather this info, then Britain, Canada, New Zeeland, or Australia will gather the info and share it with the US. And we will return the favor.

 

[CrazyLikeGollum]

Isn't FISA supposed to be used for gathering intelligence on foreign threats? Since when is foreign intelligence the purview of the DoJ? As I understand it that's the job of the CIA, NSA, and the military intelligence orgs. While acting on that intelligence falls to the Department of State, Homeland Security, or the Department of Defense, depending on the nature of the threat. The only time the FBI should be involved in any sort of foreign intelligence operation is if a US citizen has been implicated, and then they should need a warrant.

Why is the FBI able to use authority from FISA to do anything, when it's purpose is for something that is utterly irrelevant to their mission as an agency and doing so is blatantly unconstitutional?

 

[mjeffer]

So if it becomes illegal for US agencies to gather this info, then Britain, Canada, New Zeeland, or Australia will gather the info and share it with the US. And we will return the favor.

The US agencies will still gather and share all that information amongst all those countries. This is about whether they can use the information "inadvertently" gathered about US citizens.

 

[Seraphiel]

The Republican Party is a terrorist organization.

It would be malpractice for any law enforcement personnel to ignore leads connected to it just because some of its agents happen to hold some political office.

 

[jrrwired]

International entanglements of sitting representatives is very much a national security concern. So he's being investigated? Good. Hire a lawyer, work through the system you were elected to support.

 

[s73v3r]

Not true! Take, for example, Naomi Wolf’s latest article on her Substack.

I would rather pound rusty nails into my dick

 

[graylshaped]

To some R I know, being a R and voting for R is still to them the "lesser" of two evils. While they claim places like CA and Ds do things like cut off their own hands to spite their face. /Shrug

It strikes me as weird. CA is the fifth largest economy in the world, as a single state. I donate my tax dollars to red states who do not give a shit about their own residents.

We truck along.

 

[Shavano]

So they charged, prosecuted and jailed the people responsible? No? In that case, there is nothing to deter the next abuse, and the one after that...

Seriously, if they do this to a Congresscritters, there's far less to worry about doing it to the rest of the population.

For doing a sloppy search?

 

[Shavano]

Do you have any idea how many innocent people have had their lives ruined by this type of thinking?

I think zero. They FBI would have to go a lot further than doing a computer search on your name to ruin your life.

People are not doing a great job of keeping perspective on what actually was reported here.

 

[pnellesen]

It is not a stretch now a days to suspect a republican of being either a traitor, a terrorist or both.

Hell, you can't even BE a Republican in 2023 if you're not.

 

[jesse1]

At least read the article… LaHood said Section 702 is invaluable and should be reauthorized, but requires reforms. Hardly throwing the baby into the garbage. Plenty of valid criticism to be leveled at Congress and Republicans, but this is wildly inaccurate.

Exactly. He is just angry the violation is happening to him but is perfectly fine with it in general. Although he isnt the only person being hypocritical because some posters here would probably be fine with it if the searches where related to Jan 6.

People dont realize the road to here is from people who are fine with people's rights being violated if they dont like them.

 

[RZetopan]

Funny how those draconian, repressive laws to invade the privacy of other people are suddenly deemed "bad" when it's invading the privacy of the people who created the laws in the first place, huh?

As the member of the face eating leopard party said: I didn't think that the leopard was going to eat my face!