A Minnesota state politician and her husband were assassinated on Friday, and another Minnesota politician survived an assassination attempt. Investigators say the suspect had a list of many more targets, and notes on how to find people’s addresses and other information online.
The man who allegedly assassinated a Democratic Minnesota state representative, murdered her husband, and shot a state senator and his wife at their homes in a violent spree early Saturday morning may have gotten their addresses or other personal details from online data broker services, according to court documents.
Suspect Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of shooting Minnesota representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in their home on Saturday. The couple died from their injuries. Authorities claim the suspect also shot state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman in their home earlier that night. The pair are currently recovering and are “incredibly lucky to be alive,” according to a statement from their family.
According to an FBI affidavit, police searched the SUV believed to be the suspect’s and found notebooks that included handwritten lists of “more than 45 Minnesota state and federal public officials, including Representative Hortman’s, whose home address was written next to her name.” According to the same affidavit, one notebook also listed 11 mainstream search platforms for finding people’s home addresses and other personal information, like phone numbers and relatives.
Last I read was that while police found a bunch of documents in his vehicle, there was no clear manifesto so it would be to early to pinpoint a motive.
All sources seem to point to this being at least a factor.
It appears these law makers info was also publicly available without using a data broker site.
The addresses for both lawmakers targeted on Saturday were readily available. Representative Hortman’s campaign website listed her home address, while Senator Hoffman’s appeared on his legislative webpage, The New York Times reports.
Not sure if that’s true for everyone on this guys list though.
Friendly reminder to keep discussion related to data privacy! Further speculation about the shooter’s motives or other political-related matters is off-topic
Yeah, I thought that was strange. Perhaps he started with these two targets because he didn’t need to dig for their info. I wonder if for everyone else on the list, this was a case of “not faster than the bear, but faster than the guy next to you”.
Nothing will happen in regards to policing data brokers, this administration has mastered the art of putting on a “show” for it’s pedantic audience. We won’t see any legislative changes to improve our privacy. We’re nothing but numbers to them, we’re all expendable as you can see clearly by whats happened in only 3-4 months…
Maybe now that one of these websites is tied to the death of a high profile individual, the political class will finally want something done about these websites. I won’t hold my breath though.
Telephone books were/are an even worse privacy nightmare, and they were not banned for usage in assassinations; they just became obsolete. They are still available in some locations.
Usage of a telephone book is much “stealthier” than a data broker site. Activity on a data broker site is logged; even if you’re connecting through Tor there are still records about who was searched up.
But what pages you flip through in a telephone book is completely anonymous.
Perhaps. One difference is traditional phonebooks do not attempt to link you to your relatives. Yes, if you share a surname and home address, it’s obvious, but that’s the extent of it. People search websites look at your historical data to attempt to link you to your family members anywhere in the world.
And importantly, phonebooks are much easier to opt out of, because they are explicitly opt in. You choose whether or not to be included in the phonebook when signing up for your (landline) phone service. Contemporary people search websites collect their information without your consent, and it’s left to you to opt out to every one of these pests like a game of whack-a-mole.
When I read that the perpetrator used data from several data broker websites, my first thoughts were about the extent of culpability of data brokers, and that this case demonstrates in a high-stakes manner that security and privacy are inextricably linked.
I often hear people say “that’s security, not privacy” or “we prioritize security, not privacy” (and vice-versa) in IT and in the privacy community, but in most instances their statements are wrong. This case clearly demonstrates that (in general) privacy issues are security issues. The reverse is also true.
