The Foreign Agent Registration Act requires the Justice Department to maintain detailed reports of lobbying firms hired by foreign governments and by organizations–including for-profit companies–that are controlled by foreign governments.
These reports, filed by the firms biannually, disclose specific details about which government officials, including members of Congress and their staffs, were contacted by lobbyists for each client and gives details about what specific issues were discussed. The firms must also disclose all the campaign donations made by their employees who lobby for foreign clients.
This database is an experiment and a work in progress. It shows, in greater detail than the lobbying disclosure records maintained by the Senate Office of Public Records, how lobbyists try to influence public policy.
It contains records filed in 2006 and 2007 by lobbyists for entities from 15 foreign countries–a small sliver of the available data. The countries included here have been selected to maintain a geographical diversity.
Users can search by lobbying firm, client or member of Congress's office contacted. One other search option allows users to search various issues, which is a free text search. The current search function does not allow multiple search options at the same time. It allows some amount of calculations of aggregate numbers and also lets users download parts of the dataset.