Congress Computers Stolen In Siege | Muslim App Sells Location Data | Parler's Near Death Experience

Plus: WhatsApp Tells Users: Share Your Data With Facebook Or We’ll Delete Your Account

A disastrous week for American democracy was also a potentially damaging one for the digital security of Congress. Though certainly not the most worrisome aspect of the siege of Capitol Hill, laptops went missing from the offices of speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Jeff Merkley.

Thus far, it doesn't appear anything particularly sensitive was on those computers and rumors that hard drives also went missing have proven unfounded as yet. Sources who have extensive knowledge of Capitol Hill cybersecurity told me that whilst Congressional IT teams should be focusing on finding out just what was compromised, security has never been particularly good amongst representatives, senators and their staff.

As the soul searching continues in D.C. after this calamity, perhaps it would be wise to rethink how physical and digital safety is handled on the Hill too.

If you have any tips on government surveillance or cybercrime, drop me an email on tbrewster@forbes.com.

The Big Story

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Joseph Cox at Vice has discovered a second Muslim app that's been selling location data of its users to a data broker, one that was linked to a contractor for Immigration Customs Enforcement. Cox even acquired some of the location data and was able to see where the app's users were frequenting.

Kaspersky has released research claiming there are some code similarities in the malware from the SolarWinds attacks and the tools used by a group called Turla. It may provide more evidence Russia was behind the hacks, but Russia has denied culpability.

Following the death of George Floyd, at least 20 surveillance military helicopters flew over demonstrators across American cities during the first two weeks in June. But, as April Glaser NBC reports, police aren't divulging what information they were gathering or how they were using the data.

Facial recognition app Clearview, which was funded by Palantir and Facebook backer Peter Thiel, saw a spike in use after Capitol attack, the New York Times reported. There are concerns about how public facial recognition tools have been used to identify suspects, and also that demand for surveillance tech could go into overdrive because of the storming on Congress.

Winner Of The Week

Signal has been seeing a huge number of downloads after WhatsApp's privacy policy confirmed it was going to share more data with its owner Facebook. Signal has strong encryption and stores little data on users, so is great for anyone looking for a quick, easy and pretty private messaging and call app.

Loser Of The Week

Parler, the social network that was hugely popular amongst the far-right and Trump supporters, has been effectively taken offline after it was dumped by Amazon Web Services and removed from Apple and Google app stores. But before it was gone, a cybersecurity researcher going by the name @donk_enby claims she was able to archive all messages sent on the app. She tells me the content will be available on the web soon. Watch this space.