[jfoutz]

Lots of people seem to think the right answer is selling improved security. I disagree. It would be much more exiting to get the data coming from politicians homes, and the homes of their staff. It would be a fantastic way to generate news. Why is senator X's household researching cancer treatment? Will they step down this year? I can't help but think military bases would google their next deployment, that's another set of huge news articles.

If you're more into the finance side of things, CXO's home clickstreams would probably be enlightening. Or hedge fund managers. Some will be fully encrypted and secure, but just the dns would be a strong signal about what companies they're researching.

That is the kind of business that will drive privacy legislation.

[supertrope]

The Video Privacy Protection Act was passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's rental history was leaked to a newspaper.

[youdontknowtho]

That's amazing. I...just...wow. Wow.

[confounded]

Those people will have VPNs and other security measures. This is about exploiting ordinary people to widen the power differential between the two.

[jfoutz]

I think you overestimate the average politician. They may not bother with the internet. I'm confident Senator Lamar does not.

But really, i don't think it would take very long to figure out where he and his staff in DC and in Tennessee live. I don't know what the data purchase rates are, so that could be expensive. But buy the data for a bunch of neighborhoods. Perhaps 50,000 people. watch the data for a while, query strings with Lamar would be good indicators.

Heck, make some really finely targeted ads on Facebook.

I think the reality is most news sourced this way would be super tabloidish. i mean, you're going to figure out what porn they look at faster than what policy they're developing.

[ianai]

I think you're onto something. I also think this falls into investigative journalism - which used to be able to drum up funds for that sort of cost.

There are all sorts of problems like this. What could you learn from the browsing history of people that work in sensitive areas? i.e. nuclear facilities, national labs, financial/industry regulators, etc. City and state representatives probably give away a lot through browsing. There's plenty of low lying fruit ripe for exploiting in huge ways.

Another avenue: merely knowing when someone is likely to browse the internet tells you:

-they're awake

-they're at home/indications of their location

-their level of awareness (think security workers or even prison guards)

Imagine being able to figure out the best time of day to hit a bank by browsing history? In an aggregate way you could probably figure out staffing (corporate level) or whether someone's home (residential level).

[j_s]

https://www.gofundme.com/BuyCongressData

https://searchinternethistory.com/ (currently 500 errors)

source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13985684

[spangry]

I've always liked the idea of using the copious public video of these politicians to train voice and face recognition NNs, specifically targeting anti-privacy politicians. Maybe even sell pre-made raspberry pis with all of this stuff preloaded for journalists to scatter around places that politicians congregate.

I think it's only fair that these folks get to be the first ones to live in the kind of world they are creating. And none of them should have a problem with any of this, because I'm certain none of them ever do anything wrong and therefore have nothing to hide.

[whoopdedo]

Getting the information through their ISP may be too subtle. Just send them a FOIA request for the browser history. When they ask why or deny it, you can raise the question of why they want to keep their information private, but allow our information to be fair game.

[sbov]

This doesn't work. They will simply deny your request and say "no big deal". I mean, they're important people, of course you shouldn't see their private browsing information!

The big deal is when you drop a report full of embarrassing information you collected without their knowledge and they are powerless to stop it because of their own bill they passed.

[andreyf]

If my ISP were to sell my data, how would they refer to me to the buyers? Would it be legal for them to use a cookie identifier in HTTP traffic they routed?

[TeMPOraL]

Well, pastebinning communication of a politician (or better - their kid) seems like such an effective idea, I wonder why this doesn't seem to happen? Is there a strong roadblock somewhere there? It's not like most politicians and their staff know much about Internet security.

[tomw2005]

Well in the UK they amended the law to exempt themselves: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

[matt4077]

Let's leave their kids out of this.

[hysan]

Honest question. Why?

[KurtMueller]

I think somebody's doing a kickstarter exactly for what you're talking about.

[FridgeSeal]

Got a link?