Minnesota shooting suspects allegedly used a data broker site to find the target’s address

man He was reportedly assassinated A Democrat Minnesota representative may have obtained an address from an online data broker service, killing her husband and shooting a state senator and wife in violent disturbances early Saturday morning, according to court documents.

Suspect Vance Belter, 57, is accused of shooting and death Minnesota representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman at her home Saturday. The couple died from injuries. Authorities alleged that the suspect shot state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman at their home earlier that night. The pair are now recovering and are “incredibly lucky to be alive.” According to a statement from their family.

According to an FBI affidavit, police believe the SUV is believed to be a suspect and found a notebook containing a handwritten list of “more than 45 civil servants in Minnesota and federal civil servants including Hortman’s representative written next to her name.” According to the same affidavit, one notebook also lists 11 mainstream search platforms for finding people’s home addresses and other personal information, such as phone numbers and relatives.

Addresses for both lawmakers targeted on Saturday were immediately available. Representative Hortman’s campaign website listed his home address and Senator Hoffman appeared on his legislative webpage. The New York Times reports.

“Boerter crept his victims like prey,” our lawyer Joseph Thompson argued at a press conference Monday. “He studied the victims and their families. He used the internet and other tools to find their addresses and names, their family names,” Thompson also claimed that the suspect had monitored the victim’s home.

The suspect faces several charges of two-degree murder.

Privacy and public safety advocates have long argued for it The US needs to regulate data brokers To ensure that people have better control over the sensitive information available. The US has no comprehensive data privacy laws and efforts to regulate data brokers from within federal agencies Most of it was cancelled.

“The accused Minneapolis Assassin is said to have used a data broker as a key part of his plot to track and kill Democrats,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden from Oregon told Wired. “Congress doesn’t need any more evidence that people are being killed based on data for sale to people with credit cards. All American safety is at risk until they crack down on this sleazy industry.”

In many cases, basic information such as residential addresses can be found through public records such as voter registration data (published in some states) and political donation data, says Gary Warner, a longtime digital fraud researcher and intelligence director at cybersecurity firm Darktower. Anything that is not readily available through public records is almost always easy to find using the popular “search for people” service.

“Finding your home address is trivial, especially if someone has lived in the same place for many years,” Warner says. He adds that “there are other favorite sites for young people, non-residents, and fewer political people” to find personal information.

For the public and many in politics, Saturday’s violent crimes bring new urgency to long-standing questions about how to protect sensitive personal data online.

“These are not the first murders to be breached by the data brokerage industry. But most of the previous goals were relatively unknown victims of stalking and abuse,” argued Evan Greer, deputy director of the Digital Rights Group’s Future Battle. “Deputies need to act before they can get more blood.”