There was a bit of a dust-up yesterday regarding a letter Sen. Mark Warner sent to the FTC regarding Facebook’s secretive behavioral experiment with users’ news feeds back in 2012. The good Senator is worried about the uses of “big data,” and while he is not “convinced additional federal regulation is the answer,” he still wants the FTC to tell him whether it may need more regulatory authority to oversee the private uses of individual information.

Fair enough. And the matter may have ended there, but for the response of Libertarian Senate candidate Robert Sarvis’ campaign:

Earlier today, incumbent Senator Mark Warner said more about Facebook’s impact on users’ privacy than he has said in an entire year about the federal government’s vast surveillance program collecting and storing innocent Americans’ phone calls and emails. If Mark Warner truly cares about privacy, he should apologize for his votes to reauthorize the misnamed “Patriot” Act and the FISA Amendments Act, his votes against reforms to better protect our civil liberties, and his votes to keep Americans in the dark about the government’s mass surveillance programs: In 2011, Warner voted for reauthorizing three controversial provisions of the “Patriot” Act, and in 2012, for the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act. The government has relied on both to justify its bulk data collection. Warner voted against the Wyden Amendment to FISA that would have required the government to provide a report assessing the impact of its programs on the privacy of Americans. Warner voted against the Merkley Amendment to FISA to require the Attorney General to release FISC opinions so Congress and the American people could understand how the government was conducting its surveillance program and whether the secret courts were providing sufficient oversight. Warner voted against the Leahy Amendment to FISA that would have shortened the extension from 5 to 3 years to allow for more opportunity for debate and reform. Warner voted against the Paul Amendment to FISA to protect Americans’ 4th Amendment rights. Last year, in a Senate Intelligence Committee vote, Warner voted for the misnamed FISA Improvements Act, which civil libertarian groups oppose because it would actually enshrine into law the government’s bulk data collection programs without providing meaningful reform or protections for Americans’ privacy. A clear majority of Americans oppose mass surveillance and warrantless searches of Americans’ electronic records, but I am the only candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia who will fight to protect Americans’ civil liberties.

That’s the value of having Libertarian candidates in a race. They have a knack for pointing out the self-serving inconsistencies in major party narratives.

And in this case, the Warner campaign felt compelled to issue its own response:

“As a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Warner has worked to strengthen protections for privacy and civil liberties while also making sure that our intelligence community can continue keeping us safe. The Intel committee passed his bipartisan amendments to empower FISA oversight by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent, respected outside body, as well as to allow the FISA court to consult outside experts on privacy and civil liberties.”

In short, “bless his heart, Mr. Sarvis has no idea what he’s talking about.”

But what we have in this exchange is a sitting Senator, who is supposedly up big in the polls, engaging a third-party candidate. That’s unusual.

So good on the Sarvis folks for poking the notoriously thin-skinned Warner.

And as for the Gillespie campaign…you’d best be paying attention to this sort of thing. One reason why Warner engaged Sarvis is to give him a little bit of credibility (though not by name…that’s still taboo). The aim is clear: give the third-party guy a smidgen of ink, and who knows? He might become a factor in November.