In a statement released a day before the inquiry, the group’s president, Jayd Henricks, said: “This is not about straight or gay priests and seminarians. Behavior that in some way hurts all involved and is a testimony to the ministry of the Church.”
The United States has no national data privacy laws that prohibit the sale of such data.
On Wednesday, the District of Columbia’s health insurance exchange confirmed it was working with law enforcement to investigate an alleged leak after a database containing the personal information of about 170,000 people was sold on a hacking forum popular with cybercriminals. It is well known that reported breaches in DC Health Link can expose sensitive personal data of lawmakers, their employees, and their families. Thousands of exchange participants work in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and a sample of the stolen dataset reviewed by CyberScoop suggests that victims of the breach also included lobbyists and coffee shop workers.
The FBI has apparently purchased some of the stolen data from the dark web, according to a letter from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the head of the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority. While the FBI has yet to determine the extent of the breach, according to the letter, “the size and scope of the affected House clients is likely to be extraordinary.”
A report from Politico on March 7 detailed how Amazon’s home surveillance company Ring gave law enforcement video from 20 of its Ring cameras to law enforcement against the will of an Ohio man. In December, the Hamilton Police Department sought a search warrant for camera footage — including footage taken from the man’s home — while investigating his neighbors. Police reportedly used the courtroom against his will to obtain more footage after he voluntarily provided police with video showing the street outside his home.
While law enforcement often seeks authorizations for digital data, these authorizations are often related to the subject of a specific investigation. However, as internet-connected home surveillance cameras have become more prevalent, sometimes blanketing city blocks, law enforcement has increasingly turned to individuals completely unrelated to the case to provide data. According to Politico, the lack of legal controls on what police can request opens the door for police to legally obtain indoor home videos of bystanders.
After Politico’s story, Gizmodo reported that a Ring customer service agent told a concerned customer that Politico’s story was a “prank” by a competitor. In response, an Amazon spokesperson told Gizmodo that the company doesn’t actually believe the story is a hoax, and that the statement was the result of a misunderstanding by a customer support agent. “We will ensure that surrogates are properly instructed,” the spokesman said.
The former roommate of famed fabler George Santos has told federal authorities that the U.S. congressman from Long Island, New York, orchestrated a credit card theft in Seattle in 2017. In a statement filed with authorities and obtained by Politico — the Brazilian man convicted of credit card fraud and deported from the U.S. — told the FBI, “Santos taught me how to scan card information and how to clone cards. He gave me All the materials, and taught me how to install skimming devices and cameras on ATM machines.”
Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha met Santos in 2016 when he rented a room in his Florida apartment, according to the statement. There, Santos reportedly taught Trelha how to use credit card cloning devices and eventually flew him to Seattle to begin stealing financial information. “My deal with Santos is 50 percent to him and 50 percent to me,” Trelha wrote.
