
What is Congress browsing? - _pius
https://www.govtrack.us/sousveillance
======
sandworm101
They should also track html referer tags. That should give insight into the
blogs that staffers are reading, at least those that link people over to
govtrack. Other data can be used to identify individual devices which, when
tied to the known movements and appearances of public figures, should be
enough to identify individuals. Heck, put the entire data dump online and
crowdsource the project. Within weeks we'll know which senators are reading
which bills while they commute, and which don't.

To go the next step, govtrack could adopt some proper ad-based cookies to
track users across multiple sites. But that would cost money. I'm surprised
Larry Flint, and anyone else looking for dirt on politicians, haven't done
this already.

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emerman
So this is certainly an interesting idea - it's entertaining and it feels
enlightening but the reasoning behind it seems a bit off base.

The assumption behind this effort seems to be a sort of retribution-based. So
there's a couple things wrong with that - staff are the only ones using
computers, not Members, and it doesn't bother us too much. We expect none of
our browsing history to be private and are used to having every part of our
jobs as public information - see Legistorm.

Members are not going to care if their staff's web browsing information is
public - even if it did go beyond just who is visiting govtrack and when.
They'd fire the staff they needed to without hesitation and still show no
remorse for their vote.

This is without even mentioning that only Republican offices voted in support
of the rollback of the FCC regulation.

It's a harder issue to solve, but the problem really is that business
interests will almost always trump constituent concerns. Having privacy groups
come meet with Congressmembers helps - setting up an organized campaign helps
somewhat too. But for Republicans, this bill was only a matter of what made
economic sense.

~~~
karmelapple
Even if this was built on retribution - which, as pointed out by the author of
the website, it is not - I would still be glad it exists, even in spite of
that rationale.

It's not to harm you, the staffer who already knows everything you do is being
tracked.

Instead, I think it is to start conversations with less technically-inclined
people about privacy. That the conversation can start with data from the
offices of people who passed this legislation is important, because explaining
it in a more broader sense can be difficult and, potentially, scary.

It's good to hear you, as Congressional staff, know that your history is
already tracked. GovTrack is doing nothing more than what you already expect.
Just think if CNN started dumping this data for everyone in the country to
start a conversation, though; that would be scarier and more of an invasion of
privacy against unwitting citizens.

Because GovTrack is only publishing your internet accesses of its site -
rather than the much wider amount of information on Legistorm - this gives me
a great way to inform people about what happens.

I've already started a conversation with my friends and family about what
tracking really happens on the internet.

I have been surprised at the misunderstandings many of my friends have about
what can and cannot be tracked by various actors online. The huge reach of
Facebook and Google in tracking people and knowing what you like has confused
many people about the difference between what those private companies know and
what the ISP knows.

I applaud GovTrack for providing this. Releasing it close to when the recent
bill was passed by both houses of Congress is handy timing that will let that
conversation continue with my less-tech-oriented friends and family.

> It's a harder issue to solve, but the problem really is that business
> interests will almost always trump constituent concerns.

And that's the conversation I can continue to have with my friends and family,
thanks to this history readout on GovTrack.

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sbov
I won't hold my breath, but this could be interesting if this caught on with
other more mainstream websites, and they all shared the same tracking cookie.
Google Analytics for congress. As is it's obviously relatively limited.

~~~
zapt02
There is a very popular service in Sweden for exactly this. By freely
embedding a tracking image on your website, you can see a listing of
government, media and news agencies and which sites they visit:
[https://gnuheter.com/creeper/senaste](https://gnuheter.com/creeper/senaste)

~~~
samstave
Gosh, that should be a freaking law here in the US for every site to require
inclusion of this...

~~~
a3n
I'm with you on the sentiment, but damn, I sure don't want the government
telling me what I have to say.

Voluntary, widespread, even "boycott the ones who don't do this!" All of
that's free speech. But not mandated by law.

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ChiliDogSwirl
I work for a local (County-level) government, and our firewall logs have been
available by FOIA request for years. I can't say if congress is as
transparent, but if people really are intent on exposing congress's web
browsing habits, that would probably be a more productive way to begin.

~~~
joshdata
The US Congress is not subject to federal FOIA law, so that would be
impossible at the federal level. -- guy behind the linked site

~~~
a3n
It's good to be one of 537 kings.

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eatbitseveryday
> What is Congress browsing?

This question implies something else: what are all the URLs
referenced/accessed by Congress? The page says something different, and I
believe the headline is misleading:

> This page is a public record of any time someone visits GovTrack.us from
> within the United States Senate, House of Representatives, or the White
> House, and their associated office buildings.

Of all pages one can browse on the web from within Congress machines, how
relevant is GovTrack.us overall in that data? It's like saying the ISP
publishes only my browsing data that happens to hit on my ISP's own website
itself. Did I misunderstand something?

A better strategy would be to determine which ISP serves Congress, and pay
them for the data of IPs originating from Congress.

~~~
BoringCode
> A better strategy would be to determine which ISP serves Congress, and pay
> them for the data of IPs originating from Congress.

Except that would be illegal (and no ISP is going to sell raw data, even if
they could)

~~~
Zigurd
What law is there to deter de-anonymizing data from an ISP? With a combination
of ISP data, tracking cookies, etc. from multiple data providers, individually
identifiable profiles should be possible.

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willvarfar
So is there some image from this site we can all embed in our own sites and
content so they get tracked more widely? Do govtrack welcome and have the
bandwidth for that?

~~~
joshdata
We'd consider helping with that, but someone else would need to take the lead
on the effort. -- the guy behind GovTrack

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sushisource
Someone in there is using Vivaldi? Wat?

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amadeuspzs
How useful to now have a list of most popular OS/Browser versions to maximize
(spear)phishing attacks.

> from House (PC / Windows 10 / Edge 14) > from Senate(PC / Windows 7 / Chrome
> 56)

Will be fun to do some analysis after a while and see if there are any obvious
trends (House vs Senate, where do outdated browser/OS combos visit the most).

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aorth
Title is misleading. Should be "Is Congress browsing GovTrack.us?" From their
FAQ:

> _This page is a public record of any time someone visits GovTrack.us from
> within the United States Senate, House of Representatives, or the White
> House, and their associated office buildings._

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dsschnau
What a cool concept. Maybe there should be packages for major web frameworks
that implements this.

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rm_-rf_slash
Here's a thought: why are we pressuring legislators when they're mostly
accountable to their donors and party bosses? Why don't these sites track
those people instead?

~~~
DannyBee
"when they're mostly accountable to their donors and party bosses" Because
this is mostly a myth.

~~~
mtgx
No, it's not. It's proven that Congress abides by corporations' wishes 70% of
the time, and it abides by the "People's" wishes close to 0% of the time:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig)

~~~
kbenson
The reality is that right now they are _often_ accountable to their donors and
party bosses, but that is only because the public has ceded their power in
those cases by not caring enough and/or consistently enough.

They are ultimately accountable to the public, to an overwhelming degree. When
the public does not care, that allows the other influences, which are
ultimately much smaller to have an outsized influence.

By not being consistent in caring about the outcomes of votes, the public has
allowed other groups to not only have an influence, but to have it _often_.
That trains representatives to consider those other groups on all votes, as
those other groups are much better about keeping track of what the
representatives do and holding them accountable later.

So in the end, a small and weak but consistent group ends up having a
disproportionate amount of influence compared to a large and powerful but
largely inconsistent and absent group.

What this means is that it both _is_ , and _is not_ a myth. It's true that
donors and party bosses have a lot of power, but it's also true that the
constituents _control_ all the power, and it's only their lack of involvement
that allows those donors and party bosses to have the power they do. Were
constituents to become much more interested in everything their representative
did starting tomorrow, the power of those donors and party bosses would vanish
fairly quickly (depending on how likely the representative considered the
increased interest to continue).

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ceautery
God, they're all on Windows.

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strictnein
Wish the hyperventilating over this issue would die down some.

This page is about as pointless as possible. It shows when someone from the
"House" or "Senate" visits a page. Okay, and from that we will strike a blow
at the evil congressmen somehow?

