‘For sale’ website buys scrutinized

Democrats claim purchases, say aim is curbing ‘bad actors’

WASHINGTON — Dozens of web addresses implying U.S. senators were “for sale” have been quietly and mysteriously purchased online.

An Associated Press investigation found the responsible party: Democrats.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee acknowledged to the AP that it had purchased the addresses, which use a new Internet suffix “forsale,” in March for at least 27 incumbent senators facing re-election this fall and in 2020, without telling the senators. The cybersecurity director for the sergeant-atarms, the highest-ranking U.S. law enforcement officer in the Senate, has been looking into the matter.

The addresses now controlled by the Democratic political group include the names of mostly Democrats but some prominent Republicans, too, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas. The group masked its role in the purchase to ensure its identity as the buyer remained anonymous. The current price for such addresses, with a privacy guard, is roughly $18 each.

“It’s a routine campaign practice to purchase URLs to stop bad actors from getting them, and if we eventually decided to develop a URL into a website then there would be a clear disclosure of who was operating it,” said Lauren Passalacqua, communications director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Buying politically-related Web addresses to use them later online — or prevent rival campaigns from using them — has been a routine practice for years. But Washington has been transfixed by criminal charges filed against Russian military officers accused of secretly meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, accused by federal prosecutors of setting up websites like DCLeaks.com and using anonymous Twitter accounts to peddle embarrassing information about U.S. politicians.

U.S. intelligence chief Dan Coats has cautioned that the “warning lights are blinking red” and that “the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”

The mysterious “forsale” purchases set off alarms. AP’s review found roughly 280 political web addresses registered under the “forsale” domain, targeting President Donald Trump, the GOP, Supreme Court and National Rifle Association, as well as individual Democrats and Republicans. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said it was responsible for at least 27 of them targeting U.S. senators and didn’t provide further details.

“In this particular atmosphere, anything along these lines is concerning, because there’s so much opportunity for malicious use of the Internet, particularly in campaigns,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, before AP solved the mystery. King declined to comment after learning from AP that Democrats were responsible.

Tim Groeling, an expert on political communication and new media at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the anonymity sought by the Democratic group was what troubled him. The identities of whoever registered the websites were purposefully masked. He said it’s common for campaigns to purchase permutations of candidate names defensively and to use offensively against political opponents.

“The lack of transparency is both concerning from a standpoint of the potential for other governments to do this type of thing and not be revealed, and our domestic politics,” Groeling said. “I’m a big fan of transparency. I think a lot of things can be fixed with sunlight.”

The addresses use the new Internet suffix “forsale” first made available in 2015 and intended to help consumers sell unwanted items without paying auction sites. The addresses the Democrats registered included the names of Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; King; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Roger Wicker, R-Miss. and Dean Heller, R-Nev.

It was unclear who purchased the addresses targeting the NRA, GOP and others. Internet records showed they were purchased anonymously hours before the Democrats bought the ones with the senators’ names, and within seconds of each other. The address implying the Supreme Court was for sale was purchased last month.

“Social commentary has always thrived on the Internet, due to reach and cost issues,” said Paul Vixie, a highly regarded computer scientist who helped design the system of Internet addresses currently in use. “These politicians are right to reserve those names, but wrong if they think other domains only slightly less clean won’t appear.”

Warren’s staff declined to comment, as did McCaskill’s and Cruz’s. Heller, Casey, Heitkamp, Sanders and Wicker did not respond to questions. The GOP, the Democratic National Committee and the National Rifle Association also did not respond to questions from the AP.