David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle often has an interesting take on current events, and today is no exception. In an article called “Privacy is easy to breach”, following an instructive re-cap of the Valerie Plame affair, he offered a lesson in gaining “private” information using readily available Web resources, most of them free. [Note: he wrote this before today’s plot twists about who said what when to whom.] His search for information based on Rove’s “Wilson’s wife” statement is detailed below.
So I went to ZabaSearch.com, which readers of this space know is a powerful online people-search tool that rapidly combs through public records – – for free.
My first nationwide search for a Joseph C. Wilson born in 1949 turned up too many matches, so I narrowed the search by guessing that he likely lives in Washington, D.C.
Bingo. Now I had his home address. But I didn’t know his wife’s name.
So I went to the Web site of LexisNexis, a prominent data broker, and did a public-records search for Joseph Wilson in Washington, D.C., subsequently narrowing the search with Wilson’s street address. Bingo again.
“Spouse name: Wilson, Valerie E.”
For non-subscribers, LexisNexis is available online on a pay-per-search basis. It’s also accessible via acquaintances at universities, law schools and a wide variety of private companies.
I did another LexisNexis search for Valerie E. Wilson in Washington, D.C. This confirmed she lives at the same address as Joseph C. Wilson. It also took me the next step.
“Former name: Plame, Valerie E.”
I now had the identity of a covert CIA agent (who was using her maiden name as part of her cover as an energy-industry analyst working for a firm called Brewster Jennings & Associates, now known to be a CIA front company).
It took me less than a half-hour to identify her.
We already knew that it would have been easy to identify Plame, and many of us are info-finding experts. Lazarus has highlighted how all the data being amassed on all of us is a serious cause for alarm.
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.
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.”
Jeez Louize. Call me slow, but I really hadn’t considered this aspect of the Plame affair, and its ramifications in my own life. Someone in the Cafe wrote yesterday that they wouldn’t send Rove anything with their name on it, even a pink slip. When I think of how easy it is to get such detailed information on anyone, it does give me pause about being an enemy of the state. Unimportant little me with the big mouth. OK, now I’m paranoid.