Minnesota shooting suspect allegedly uses data brokerage website to find target address

That man According to court documents, the alleged assassination of a Democratic Minnesota deputy, murdered her husband, and shot a state senator and his wife in violent hype early Saturday morning, may have obtained their address or other personal details from the online data broker service.

Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of shooting Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, at her home on Saturday. The couple died of injuries. Authorities claimed that the suspect also shot and killed state Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman earlier that night. According to a statement from the family, the two are currently recovering and are “lucky to be alive.”

According to the FBI affidavit, police searched the SUV believed to be the suspect and found a notebook that included “a handwritten list of more than 45 Minnesota and federal public officials, including a Hotman representative whose home address was written next to her name.” According to the same affidavit, a notebook also lists 11 mainstream search platforms to find people’s home addresses and other personal information, such as phone numbers and relatives.

The addresses of the two lawmakers targeted on Saturday are easily available. According to the New York Times, Hortman’s campaign website listed her home address, while Senator Hoffman’s legislative page appeared.

“Boelter followed his victims like prey,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson alleged at a press conference on Monday. “He studied the victims and their families. He used the Internet and other tools to find their addresses and names and their family’s names.” Thompson also claimed that the suspects surveilled the victims’ homes.

The suspect faces several charges of second-degree murder.

Advocates of privacy and public safety have long believed that the United States should regulate data brokers to ensure people have better control over sensitive information about them. The United States does not have comprehensive data privacy legislation and largely revokes the efforts of data brokers within federal agencies.

“The defendant Minneapolis Assassin allegedly used data brokers as a key part of his plot to track and murder Democratic lawmakers,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, from Oregon, told Wired. “Congress no longer needs any evidence that people will be killed based on data from anyone with credit cards for sale. The safety of every American is at risk until Congress cracks down on this mean industry.”

In many cases, basic information such as public records (including voter registration data (published in certain states) and political donation data, such as family records, is Gary Warner, a longtime digital scam researcher and intelligence director at the intelligence firm Darktower, a cybersecurity company. It is almost always easy to find anything that is not easily accessible through public records using the popular “people search” service.

“Finding a home address, especially if someone has lived in the same place for many years, is trivial,” Warner said, adding that for “young people, non-familyists and fewer politicians, there are other favorite sites” to find personal information.

For many in the public and politics, Saturday’s violent crime frenzy has brought new urgency to how to protect sensitive personal data online.

“These are not the first murders that the data brokerage industry taught bet. But most of the previous targets were relatively unknown victims of stalking and abuse,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of the Digital Rights Group’s fight for the future. “Lawmakers need to act before they have more blood on their hands.”