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Googling for CIA Agents 494

Posted by Zonk from the tomorrow-today dept.
yali writes "As the heat turns up on the investigation into how an undercover CIA officer's identity was leaked to the press a technology columnist at the SF Chronicle, David Lazarus, shows how easy it is to identify individuals via the Internet. Even with little information, using widely available tools like Google and LexisNexis, it is possible to turn up startlingly relevant details." From the article: "I then went back to Google and got a map of Plame's neighborhood and directions to her home. Google also allowed me to study a high-resolution satellite photo of Plame's house. I could see that the property appears to be in a quiet residential community and looks approachable from all sides. It also offers ready access by car to major thoroughfares."
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Googling for CIA Agents More

Googling for CIA Agents

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  • And? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:36PM (#13076877) Homepage Journal
    So the reporter was able to identify her by name and her maiden name. He was also able to dig up information as to where she lives and details regarding their home. What he was unable to do with this search is define what it is Ms. Plame actually did for a living. This information could be dug up via a search of tax records documenting her employer, but even this will not describe responsibilities within that employer. For instance, any W-2s I might have had would say that the listed person was an employee of the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency but they would not say anything about what job was actually performed.

    • But if they had access to (Score:5, Funny)

      by WebHostingGuy ( 825421 ) * on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:42PM (#13076938) Homepage Journal
      their wallet and jewelry box they could look for the "I am a certified spy" card and secret decoder ring.

    • Re:And? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Arbin ( 570266 ) *

      Don't know how you got modded as insightful since you obviously didn't read the article. Note the comment in the article where it states:

      "And I now possess all this information simply because I know (from Karl Rove, via Matt Cooper) that Joseph Wilson's wife "apparently works at the agency on WMD issues.""

      • Re:And? (Score:5, Informative)

        by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:52PM (#13077038) Homepage Journal
        Don't know how you got modded as insightful since you obviously didn't read the article. Note the comment in the article where it states:

        You don't know much about the Agency do you? Do you have any idea how many analysts work there? Do you realize that all analysts are not "agents" working in secret as supposed employees of the State Department? Do you realize that agents working under-cover are often analysts? Determining who is actually a "spook" can be difficult and that is the problem with this case. If Ms. Plame was actually an under-cover operative, then an egregious violation of protocol and law has occurred.

        As an aside: You should also know that there are a significant number of employees working for the agency that are doing nothing in the way of classified work.

        • Consider this... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Big Sean O ( 317186 )
          The reason why there is a special prosecutor is because the CIA asked the justice department to investigate the alleged violation. Atty General John Ashcroft took a look at the allegations and decided that is was worth investigating. It was Ashcroft that assigned Fitzgerald as the special prosecutor.

          Pundits and Politicos can argue over whether she was a NOC or not, but the CIA apparently thought a violation occurred, and I trust they would know her status.

    • You're Right: And... Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cmholm ( 69081 ) <cmholmNO@SPAMmauiholm.org> on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:52PM (#13077036) Homepage Journal
      Jesus, could this "story's" headline be any less thought out? When Adm. Poindexter was leading the Total Information Awareness project, this sort [eyeball-series.org] of digital dumpster diving was news three years ago. If someone wants to report on something fresh, they'll need to exploit search engines to find agents when you don't know who they are.

    • Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DavidTC ( 10147 ) <slas45dxsvadiv.v ... m ['box' in gap]> on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:53PM (#13077050) Homepage
      She was a NOC, someone with 'non-offical cover'. Some people know what that means, but many apparently don't.

      For those who don't, anything listing her job would have had her working at that CIA front, 'Brewster Jennings & Associates'. Completely unrelated to the government.

      Which also means she was DISAVOWED if she got caught, not sent home with a stern note and public complaints like those with diplomatic immunity pretending to work for the state department.

      Many times spouses of NOCs don't even know who they really work for. Although presumably hers did, considering who he worked for.

      OTOH, you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.

      • Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:03PM (#13077155) Homepage Journal
        Man, how come I never have mod points when I want them? This is an angle I hadn't realized. It's not just Plame who was outed, but everybody at "Brewster Jennings".

        • Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by sneakers563 ( 759525 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:06PM (#13078036)
          Not only that. Think about all the people in foreign countries that had contact with her, maybe even worked with her. Now suppose those people live in countries with not-so-friendly, not-so-concerned-with-human-rights governments. What about them? Make no mistake: outing an agent doesn't just consign them to a desk job for the rest of their lives. In some ways, they're the ones least affected by it. It endangers the lives of countless others in very real ways.

      • Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:07PM (#13077199)
        > you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.

        And numerous eastern european spook agencies where Plame worked for all those years have already done this. I'm sure they've also looked through their past records to find who met with who from that company a few years back.

        I remember back shortly after this Plame story first broke way back when, a friend of a friend said the rumors going over on the Hill (take with whatever salt you feel necessary) said as many as 70 of our sources had vanished. If that's true, most of them probably went into hiding, the remainder would have gotten quietly "picked up." Either way, they're not talking to our people anymore.
        It's dangerous being an informant for a foreign government, especially when that government's spy agencies can be jerked around like this by some half-ass political hack like Karl Rove, the Mayberry Machiavelli.

      • Re:And? (Score:4, Informative)

        by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:09PM (#13077216) Homepage Journal
        We actually do not know for sure what her status was as that information has never been released to the public and knowing the history of the employer, likely will not be.

        OTOH, you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.

        You should know that there are many, many companies and organizations hire "consultants". Brewster Jennings is a company that was indeed real, but set up as a cover company who may have in fact hired other folks that were not "cover". I am unaware of any specifics that have been published on this. However, you should also know that there are many other real companies that hire consultants. Companies that deal in construction, or real estate, or defense products, or science can all have "consultants" installed and working as cover for other purposes. Many of these companies can be found as customers of Dun & Bradstreet, but I will tell you that there are legitimate companies and cover companies they do business with and they can both do classified work or neither. My point is that just because someone is listed as an employee of such a company, that really means nothing as to their status or identity as a potential NOC. To paraphrase Freud, "A secretary may in fact just be a secretary."

      • Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Mark_in_Brazil ( 537925 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:09PM (#13078062)
        OTOH, you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.
        Actually, that's the real problem with the "outing" of Valerie Plame. Brewster, Jennings was a great CIA asset, with close ties to ARAMCO and other major oil companies and ministries. Now it is useless as a front for US intelligence.
        What's the problem with this? Well, there's been a lot of talk of oil production having reached its peak and begun its decline. Financial Times recently reported that the Saudis had admitted that OPEC oil production won't be able to meet world demand within 20 years.
        I don't know whether petroleum production has yet reached its peak and started to decline, and I don't know when OPEC will not be able to meet world demand. Wouldn't it be nice if at this time of uncertainty, the USA had some kind of asset capable of investigating these things from up close?
        Too bad a political vendetta destroyed major intelligence assets that could have helped with just that.
    • I can see the day where we all change our last name to "Smith" or something of that nature.

    • Re:And? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 )
      This is good for more than spies- we can catch the terrorists this way! Mohammed Atta had no maiden name- I can tell you that without even doing a search. If someone had only told me he was going to commit a terrorist attack, I could have gone to Google and gotten a hi res aerial photo of the crappy apartment where he was living.

      I like how Bush put it: "Commissioner, if I had known that Arab terrorists were going to hijack airliners and fly them into the World Trade Center, I would have done everything I c
    • Not only that, but for this specific case, you wouldn't even know that she worked for the CIA. She was a field agent who who had non-official status. This means that not only her employer was to be kept secret from friends/family, but the agency itself actively kept the secret. One of the things they did was set her employer as "Brewster & Associates" or something, so even if you rummaged around her W2's and got the name Brewster, that still wouldn't tell you what she does. Attempts to contact Brews

    • Stating the obvious (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sheldon ( 2322 )
      So Karl Rove told Cooper(and probably Novak) that she was CIA.

      Someone looking up Valerie Wilson(aka Plame) to find out where she worked, would find her working at 'Brewster Jennings & Associates'. But being the intelligent sort, they would go "Hmm, didn't Novak say she was CIA?" and by logical extension they'd arrive at the conclusion that 'Brewster Jennings & Associates' was a CIA front, or at the very least it had been infiltrated by CIA.

      The point being... the problem wasn't leaking Wilson's wi

      • Re:Stating the obvious (Score:5, Informative)

        by sg3000 ( 87992 ) * <<sg_public> <at> <mac.com>> on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:29PM (#13077397)
        > 'Brewster Jennings & Associates' was a CIA front, or at the very
        > least it had been infiltrated by CIA.

        Yeah, or for the slower witted spies, you could just wait for Novak [townhall.com] to publish his second article where he identified Brewer Jennings & Associates as a CIA front company:

        > In making her April 22, 1999 [to Gore], contribution, Valerie E.
        > Wilson identified herself as an "analyst" with "Brewster-
        > Jennings & Associates." No such firm is listed anywhere, but
        > the late Brewster Jennings was president of Socony-Vacuum
        > oil company a half-century ago. Any CIA employee working
        > under "non-official cover" always is listed with a real firm, but
        > never an imaginary one.

        This was at the beginning of Novak attempting to dismiss Wilson's conclusions about his trip because he was "partisan" (even ignoring the fact that Wilson gave money to Bush and Gore, and he served under both parties' presidents). It's considered to be a logical fallacy, but it hasn't stopped Republicans from trying it in the past two years of this WMD debacle. The fact that they exposed information about the CIA for political gain is unconscionable.
    • Actually, something not reported by the media right now, but completly relevant was that Mrs. Palme was no longer undercover at the time of article. Furthermore she was already known to be a expert in WMD, and made no attempt to hide the fact from her neighbors.

      This is all political. Are people surpised?
    • Indeed. And even the technology/web aspect is bogus. In many cases, a mere phone book is that would be required to do what he did, though perhaps without the maps. He also makes the assumption that the information he found via Lexis/Nexis would have been availble two years ago. It might well have, but his methodology is suspect.

      At any rate, until Novak and Rove, however, no one would have known that Plame was a CIA agent, and anyway Bush said he'd fire the person responsible for the leaks, he made no cav

  • You're Not Field Officers (Score:5, Funny)

    by cynic10508 ( 785816 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:40PM (#13076916) Journal
    Nerds playing at being intelligence operatives. Cute.

  • Her Biggest Mistake (Score:5, Funny)

    by ndansmith ( 582590 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:40PM (#13076923)
    She probably shouldn't have joined that "CIA Spooks Only" group at Google groups.

  • Hard to tell.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by shakezula ( 842399 )
    Which is more scary, that privacy in general is a hard to obtain or that the Internet makes it readily available to anyone with too much time on their hands.

    I guess if privacy wasn't such a commodity, it wouldn't come as a shock when disrupted.
    • Which is more scary, that privacy in general is a hard to obtain or that the Internet makes it readily available to anyone with too much time on their hands.

      The courts and republican administrations have done everything they can to take away all privacy. Check out the promises the republican national committie and the City of Boston made during the conventions. Boston installed thousands of cameras throught the city, to provide added security for the republican convention. Boston promised to take them d

  • Next Stop: Mandatroy Information Pollution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phoenixhunter ( 588958 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:41PM (#13076933)
    The wonderful thing about the World Wide Web, the Information Super Highway, the Net, etc, is its ability to provide an enormous amount of information (duh). Compliments of those companies, groups, and otherwise who have developed means to mining this information, it is becoming far easier to find information you're looking for, cross-reference it, and filter out the garbage/noise/conspiracy theorists.

    Information Pollution, one of Arthur C. Clarke's insights pointed out some years back, that a time would come when the amount of noise within that enormous repository of information would become detrimental. In this case, the government might seek to inject as much contradictory information as it can.

  • Did they...? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:42PM (#13076941)
    Did Google present some nice associated ad-links for James Bond cameras, trenchcoats, and Le Carre books while you were doing these searches?

  • Next week's column (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:42PM (#13076947)
    What's his scare tactic for next week? How about "Did you know that your name and address are recorded in a privately-produced book that's located in every house and street corner in your town? For a city like New York, that's over 10 million copies of your private information."
    • What's his scare tactic for next week? How about "Did you know that your name and address are recorded in a privately-produced book that's located in every house and street corner in your town? For a city like New York, that's over 10 million copies of your private information."

      Ha! When I was a kid, they had a book like that. Everyone's name and address was in it.

      What? They still make them?

      Here's a question that won't get much response on Slashdot: Who among us is actually in the phone book anymore? (B

    • Even more ironic is if you want an unlisted number, you have to pay extra, but alternatively you can give the phone company any name to put in the directory. I had a friend who was listed in the phone book as "Judy Jetson".
    • Hilarious! Nothing else needs to be said in this thread.

  • It's worse than that... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@yah o o . c om> on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:42PM (#13076950) Homepage Journal
    Long, long ago (in the '90s), when pondering an activist anti-spam site, I was able to get the name and phone number of Spamford Wallace's mom through doing a variety of online searches, and was seriously considering posting it with a suggestion that people call her and tell her what a terrible mother she must be for raising such a scumbag of a son.

    The reason I didn't... such a sword cuts both ways. If I put his mom in play, all moms became fair game.

    But this was 8 or 9 years ago, and the only thing that reporter cited that I wasn't able to do then was examine satellite photos of Spamford's mom's house.

    - G

    • Long, long ago (in the '90s), when pondering an activist anti-spam site, I was able to get the name and phone number of Spamford Wallace's mom through doing a variety of online searches, and was seriously considering posting it with a suggestion that people call her and tell her what a terrible mother she must be for raising such a scumbag of a son.

      The reason I didn't... such a sword cuts both ways. If I put his mom in play, all moms became fair game.

      But this was 8 or 9 years ago, and the only thing

  • The three monkeys (Score:3, Insightful)

    by elgee ( 308600 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:42PM (#13076951)
    It is no guarantee, but to maximize your privacy, you must say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.
  • I think the purpose of the article is to show that with the very little info that was leaked on the CIA agent, that it is very easy to use it to identify them. I believe one of the defense's Karl Rove and his people have been trying to use is, "We didn't give out THAT much, we didn't spell out the name or anything." When in fact the article proves that any leak, however small is too dangerous to risk.

    I kinda worry I just completely stated the obvious.

    • Re:The purpose of the article. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Actually their defense is that she wasn't undercover, her status as a CIA employee was widely known by DC social circles, and Karl learned about it from the media (possibly Miller.)

      • Re:The purpose of the article. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Nope, Karl specifically stated that he did not leak the name of the agent. When it turned out that he *did* in fact reveal her identity, the White House then claimed that Karl was telling the truth because he didn't actually spell out the name of the agent, he just gave enough information to completely identify her (as this article demonstrates).
    • "I kinda worry I just completely stated the obvious."

      Judging by the other posts I read above yours, you're not.
    • I kinda worry I just completely stated the obvious.

      Don't worry. What's obvious for you is rarely obvious for most of Slashdot.

  • On Nomenclature: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NoTheory ( 580275 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:43PM (#13076958)
    The idiocy of the argument that Rove hasn't done something illegal because he only referred to Plame as Wilson's wife is underscored by articles like this. Whether he referred to her by name, or by a unique association to someone else (who is easily searchable) still picks out a unique individual, and thus still identifies her.

    Likewise, I'd go to jail just the same if i was threatening the life of George Bush or the President of the United states.

    • Re:On Nomenclature: (Score:5, Funny)

      by pcidevel ( 207951 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:52PM (#13077028)
      Likewise, I'd go to jail just the same if i was threatening the life of George Bush or the President of the United states.

      Or, Laura Bush's husband.

    • It's deja vu all over again. Instead of what is the meaning of "is", its now what is the meaning of "identify". My favorite quote so far has been:

      Well, if a reporter has a lick of logical sense, you don't need to mention a name. Karl Rove, through his lawyer, now admits that he told a reporter that Joseph Wilson's had a wife who worked as an agent for the CIA. Marriage records are public, and unless Joseph Wilson is a bigamist it's easier than pie to figure out exactly who that wife is.

    • Re:On Nomenclature: (Score:2, Informative)

      by FooGoo ( 98336 )
      Actually, the reason Rove hasn't done anything illegal is because Plame was not a clandestine agent when her name was revealed. In fact she hadn't been a covert agent for several years before her name was revealed. Also, Plame was never a deep cover NOC.

      From a Washington Times Article:
      "A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in L

      • Re:On Nomenclature: (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jafac ( 1449 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:23PM (#13077341) Homepage

        Actually, the reason Rove hasn't done anything illegal is because Plame was not a clandestine agent when her name was revealed. In fact she hadn't been a covert agent for several years before her name was revealed. Also, Plame was never a deep cover NOC.

        Not true. The Washington Times article is wrong. Wilson said that she was no longer covert the day Novak wrote the article - or rather, Novak's article caused her to lose her cover.

        This was made plain by Larry Johnson (who's making the press-rounds this week) who is a former CIA employee who knew Val P, and knew her to be a NOC, and confirms that Novak compromised her identity.

        The misinformation that she was not NOC is just a dust-up to provide cover for Rove. Not only did Rove break the law, but he compromised National Security - and clearly broke the rules that EVERY cleared person signs when they get a clearance.

  • Can someone please... (Score:5, Funny)

    by spun ( 1352 ) * <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:47PM (#13076996) Journal
    post David Lazarus address, phone number and google map coords? I'm interested in, uh, how accessible his house is by large van...
  • dlazarus(a t)sfchronicle.com

    Mr. Lazarus,

    I fail to see what you achieved that was ground-breaking. Given a name, you determined the name of the spouse? And then you found out where they live? Maybe I missed the point of your article.

    Sincerely...

  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:49PM (#13077015) Homepage Journal
    I could see that the property appears to be in a quiet residential community and looks approachable from all sides. It also offers ready access by car to major thoroughfares.


    A house in a residential area? With easy access by car? And no moats or dragons near by? This must be some sort of top secret CIA house of the future!

    Sensationalism at its finest.

    -Peter

  • Technology is a sword .... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:50PM (#13077020) Homepage Journal
    I've heard this a LOT ...
    Technology is like a sword or a gun

    It's used and misused by both sides
    Or in other words, you can do Evil with Google maps. But that doesn't make Google maps evil (maybe CIA might not see it that well).

    Essentially it lets me peek at a street address in NYC sitting here in Bangalore. I can plan and co-ordinate my ops to snuff out someone - especially if the operatives are expendable. Recon became a lot easier , especially of the aerial map kind.

    <sarcasm> How long before we hear that a terrorist attack was planned using Google Maps ? </sarcasm>

  • $GOOGLE_RM_FUNCTION ( "Sarah Conner" ) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digital photo ( 635872 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:50PM (#13077021) Homepage Journal

    Imagine if the Terminator had access to the net, as it is now. "Taking Out" all Sarah Conners within a given mile radius is a simple matter of mapping software, addressbooks, and a name+area to target.

    Now, you could locate and plan "events" around individuals throughout the US/world.

    No need for super computers... with a few PCs and access to the various API's on the net, you too can have your own war-room and tactical planning system.

  • easy to blow the entire CIA front firm too (Score:4, Interesting)

    by theodicey ( 662941 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:52PM (#13077031)
    When Robert Novak disclosed of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a CIA operative, the firm (Brewster-Jennings) which was the cover for her counterproliferation work, and presumably many others', was also totally compromised.

    Of course it's not that hard to find out where someone is working (in this case, the existence of Brewster-Jennings wasn't a secret, but the fact that it was a CIA front was).

    But the CIA would have had more time to make sure its agents and assets were secure if the company hadn't been listed on her election contribution records [washingtonpost.com]. You can see them at Open Secrets [opensecrets.org]

    I'm not saying that campaign contribution disclosure is a bad thing. It's essential to the media and bloggers investigating governmental corruption.

    But this is more pathetic evidence that Karl Rove, and everyone else involved at the White House, just didn't care. They were far more interested in retaliation and their own political gain than in the lives that were endangered, and the millions of dollars that were wasted.

  • In other news, George Bush' wife is named Laura (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sharkb8 ( 723587 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:58PM (#13077096)
    I doesn't matter that the author was able to look her name in Google. He had to find out that she was a covert operative before he would know to look her up.

    And for what it's worth, it would have been faster to look in "Who's Who in Washington". It list Joseph Wilson, and that he is married to Valerie Wilson. However, nothing this writer looked up told him that she was a covert operative.

    THe information he found had nothing to do with her status at the CIA. He knew who someone was and looked up their name. I can see it now:

    NEXT ON FOX: covert CIA operatives' cover busted by... COLLEGE FACEBOOKS. COULD IT HAPPEN TO YOU?

  • Google Me This, Batman (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @04:59PM (#13077107) Homepage Journal
    So Google lets you look at satellite photos of addresses. Which photos have already been available, even on the Internet, for a few bucks to anyone. So what? Foreign spy agencies have the bucks for satellite photos. And if they can't find the home address of an Ambassador's wife, they're not very good spies - they're not going to pull off ther rest of their spy operation on her house.

    The entire point here is that someone *cough*Karl Rove*cough* released the secret association between Valerie Plame's identity, and her job as CIA operative. That is the point in the dataflow that is sensitive. It has nothing to do with Google. Hell, I'd like to see you Google someone's house based on their Slashdot userID, let alone a CIA secret identity, without someone leaking that less than "top secret" association.
  • I think that the point needs to be made that this is not new information. That is, Lazarus' search was done using publically available real estate information. This has always been public information (in the U.S.). The difference now is that instead of having to call various county clerks/assessors, etc. he was able to do it from his computer. The internet does make it a lot easier though.
  • I am undecided on whether Karl Rove was the leak of information or not, but I do not see that this article is anything more than use of hindsight determining confirming already revealed conclusions.

    He uses google? Well, I'm sure many amateurs using google and searching on Valerie Plame Wilson would probably raise the relevancy of the findings. "Leaks can snowball" should be pretty obvious. I just fail to see the

    As an aside, whoever leaked this information was both well trusted (to have that level of in

  • All the article demonstrates is that LexisNexis knows womens' maiden names. It demonstrates nothing about outing undercover agents. The only reason the reporter knew to even look for Wilson's wife's name was because "two officials" (allegedly Rove and someone else) leaked the fact that his wife worked for the CIA. That was the source of the privacy/security breach, not Google or LexisNexis.

    And in any case, a maiden name isn't exactly private information - many acquaintances of a person have access to it, a
  • A lot of county GIS systems are available as public information on the Web. Given an address, you can view things such as recent (low altitude) aerial photos (in color), list of residents, purchase price of house, purchase history of house, current assessment, and perhaps even floor plans, and recent building permits. There's a trade-off between the public's "right-to-know" and an individual's privacy. Usually I see articles in newspapers that come out strongly for the public's "right to know'. But I gue

  • Philip Agee and Identifying CIA agents (Score:5, Insightful)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:08PM (#13077207) Journal
    Philip Agee [wikipedia.org] (interview about Plame/Wilson affair [democracynow.org]) worked for the CIA from 1957-1968, and left because he disagreed with what the CIA was doing - assassinations, overthrowing governments that weren't politically convenient for the US, supporting Latin American , that sort of thing. In 1975, he wrote a book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" about his experiences there, which the CIA tried to prevent from being published, and sometime around that time he wrote about how to identify CIA agents from publicly available information - things like the kinds of jobs at US embassies or US military bases that were usually CIA agents. (Imagine if Google had been available back then!) Barbara Bush accused Agee of being a traitor, and George H.W. Bush got Congress to pass a law making it illegal to out CIA agents, and the US and its allies revoked his passport, making it harder for him to travel. I heard Agee speak at Berkeley in ?1979? - very interesting character.

    The Don't-Out-CIA-Agents law that was passed to bust future Agees is now being used to possibly bust G.W.Bush's henchmen, probably his handler Karl Rove. The law makes it more illegal if you have access to classified information (which Rove does, but may or may not have used) and use that to reveal the identity of covert agents, but also makes it illegal to out them using publicly available information.

    The White House has been weasel-wording about "Rove didn't tell Cooper Plame's name, just that she was Wilson's wife", but not only does the law talk about identifying people, not just specifically naming them, but somehow Novak, Cooper, and probably Judith Miller all found out she was an agent, so it wasn't just a "casual remark" intended to "correct mistaken impressions" - it was a well-organized campaign, and Novak apparently talked to two different Administration sources. Not only is Rove guilty, but he's trying to cover it up.

  • With great power... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cyngus ( 753668 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:10PM (#13077224)
    ...comes great responsibility. Seriously, as more information becomes more readily available you're going to need to be able to trust everyone else more. What's the reason that most crime isn't committed? Because its too hard due to a lack of information. In other words, most of today's security is still obtained through obscurity. The burglar doesn't break into your house cause he doesn't have the blueprints to plan escape routes. The more you know the easier it is to plan an attack. A similar increase in information does not produce the same attack resistance, since an attacker must only choose one vector, while you have to protect against all of many possible vectors of attack. More information exposes more attack vectors and effectively weakens your defenses. You better start loving your neighbor, cause its only going to get easier for him to attack.
  • According to this story from The Guardian [guardian.co.uk], David Kelly was actually exposed by correlating data using Google.
    Norton-Taylor said, "I went to the internet and searched through Google and I pressed a couple of words in. I typed in the search engine something like 'Britain' plus 'Unscom' plus maybe one other word. About the first or second item on that list that came up on Google was a lecture David Kelly had given, I think in America, and it said that he was a former British Unscom inspector."
    After that, Norton-Taylor still needed confirmation, but the UK government had promised to act as an oracle [guardian.co.uk].

    The second part is the more important one. Finding information is easy, most of the time. Deciding what's relevant is the key issue.

  • Not only that (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mkro ( 644055 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @05:34PM (#13077425)
    Photos of Valerie Plame has not exactly been floating around (Except that "mysterious" Vanity Fair photo), but a few weeks ago when using Google image search, I found this page [nathanslunch.com]. Scroll a bit down, and Valerie and Joseph is posing for the camera. Not only that, the web page author is scaling the picture with the img tag. Enter the image url directly, and voila -- 2048x1536 goodness. If not a fake, it must be the most detailed picture that can be found of her on the internet.

  • Misleading title (Score:4, Informative)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) * on Friday July 15, 2005 @06:36PM (#13077877)
    The article talks about Googling not for CIA agents in general, but for a very specific agent, one whose identity had been leaked to the press (in a possibly illegal manner, gottal love habeas corpus). I doubt he'd have any luck with finding information Random Spook #3269823.12, unless some "senior administration officials" feel the need to tell us his or her identity...

  • Damn you're good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ehiris ( 214677 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:21PM (#13078125) Homepage
    Now please locate Osama for us.

  • Why is this on slashdot? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Edmund Blackadder ( 559735 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @10:10PM (#13078954)
    So if you know a CIA agent's real name you can find out more things about them by searching public records, just like you can for any other american.

    Wow.

    Here is something else I found out -- if you know the address of a buried treasure you can get a nice map from google with directions to that address. So the internet can be used to search for buried treasure. Amazing!

    Seriously, Slashdot editors should be smarter than this.

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