Want to know how much money a foreign government has spent to lobby members of Congress? How many times a lawmaker met with a lobbyist representing a foreign government? What if that person made a political donation on the same day?

Good luck finding the answers from the federal office charged with tracking American citizens who get paid to represent foreign interests in the U.S.

Documents that would provide clues to all of that information are required by the so-called Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, to be collected by the Justice Department, which provides a searchable database on its website. But the technology the government uses to catalogue and store the data is so outdated that it is next to impossible to quickly find the answers to many basic questions, according to nonprofit groups familiar with the database.

Lax enforcement and loopholes in the law have recently come to light amid controversy over the Trump administration’s alleged ties to the Russian government.

Under scrutiny for his consulting work, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn belatedly registered in March for work he did on behalf of the Turkish government.