🚀 go-pugleaf

Identities, workplaces, post office box addresses and telephone numbers 
of hundreds of CIA employees here and abroad 
I wonder if China, Russia or AlQueada have more interest and initiative 
than the Chicagoo Tribune!
Bwahahahahahahaha, sad but true!

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NYTr] Data mining easy as using credit card
Date: 12 Mar 2006 15:23:48 -0600
From: nytr@olm.b

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Chicago ribune - Mar 11, 2006
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-060311data-story,1,6943621.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Data mining easy as using credit card

by John Crewdson

The Tribune computer searches that produced the identities, workplaces, post
office box addresses and telephone numbers of hundreds of CIA employees here
and abroad relied entirely on public records, not private data.

The data the Tribune used were derived from telephone listings, real estate
transactions, voting records, legal judgments, property tax records,
bankruptcies, business incorporation papers and the like.

Until recently, such public records represented a minimal threat to privacy,
in large part because they were widely scattered in hundreds of libraries,
city halls and courthouses around the country.

But when such public records are aggregated into an individual profile, as
the data-brokerage industry has done, they acquire enormous power and can
become a dangerous tool in the wrong hands.

The principal vendors of aggregated public records--the largest is
LexisNexis, which claims more than 4 million subscribers and has compiled
more than 5 billion documents and information from 32,000 published
sources--say they have been careful about to whom they sell such
information.

They say their clients must be established businesses with a demonstrated
need for the information: law-enforcement and government agencies, employers
and property managers wanting to check new hires and renters, lawyers,
libraries, telemarketers, bill collectors, private investigators and major
newspapers such as the Tribune.

Different categories of clients have access to different levels of
information. Newspapers, for example, cannot access private information,
such as medical or credit histories that might be available to law
enforcement or government or even to certain private-sector companies.

The industry has become even more cautious about whom it accepts as
subscribers since LexisNexis' smaller rival, ChoicePoint, recently agreed to
pay $15 million in fines and penalties after failing to protect sensitive
personal data from identity thieves.

But while the major data-mining companies are scrutinizing their customers,
other Internet sites are offering anyone with a credit card virtually the
same public-record data available to subscribers to LexisNexis and
ChoicePoint--and some that the established services do not make available.

A search of one such Web site reveals, for example, that a CIA operative
currently facing Italian charges of kidnapping a radical Muslim preacher in
Milan has a criminal record in the U.S.--information that was not obtainable
elsewhere.

Searching individual Web sites is more time-consuming than purchasing a
comprehensive profile from a major data aggregator. But with only a credit
card number, the Tribune was able to obtain nearly all the information it
had acquired from data providers.

That included the names of clandestine CIA operatives assigned to U.S.
embassies, covert mailing addresses used by some of those operatives, and
the "cover names" used by several members of the CIA's paramilitary Special
Activities Division, which has participated in scores of abductions of
suspected terrorists abroad.

Home addresses and telephone numbers of CIA headquarters employees are also
available for a price, as are those of some CIA officers who are operating
overseas posing as business executives or using other "non-official cover."

Copyright ) 2006, Chicago Tribune

       
                                *
================================================================
.NY Transfer News Collective    *    A Service of Blythe Systems
.          Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us         .
.339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012     http://www.blythe.org
.List Archives:   https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
.Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
================================================================