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Googling for CIA Agents
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."
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.
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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.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
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.
It is no guarantee, but to maximize your privacy, you must say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.
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.
There are lives at stake here!
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>Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
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.
Winged Power Photography
Jesus, could this "story's" headline be any less thought out? When Adm. Poindexter was leading the Total Information Awareness project, this sort 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.
Luke, help me take this mask off
haw haw haw! better luck next time, Dems.
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?
I'm curious what evidence you've looked at. What I've seen is:
Perhaps if the CIA didn't want that front company exposed they shouldn't have sent a partisan hack to Niger and then allowed him to lie about it in the NYT.
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 wifes name. The problem was linking her to the CIA.
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.
Bill Stewart
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Let's remember that this is the NYT reporter who wrote stories citing that anonymous sources knew that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Oh, well by all means, then let's just have her thrown to the wolves then eh? Despite her other stories, the fact remains that Judith Miller is willing to take prison time for the sake of her professional ethics. I consider her reporting on the WMDs in Iraq to be incidental to the case - and a whole other bag of proverbial worms.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=4925+Weaver+
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
IANAL:
However, the media has stated time and time again that the law applies to outing a covert agent within 5 years of the agent being overseas. Valerie Plame stopped field work when she came back to the US on her last rotation, she then got married to Wilson and had twins. She worked at the Langley office as an analyst for the past six years. So I doubt anyone broke the law here. She is not technically an active NOC.
Even then, who is the NYTimes reporter protecting? I mean she's the one sitting in a prison (albeit a nice modern one with common areas and plexi glass doors instead of bars) refusing to testify to the grand jury. She sure as heck is NOT protecting Rove of all people! Also, what about Robert Novack? He's the one who first published Plame's name! Why hasn't he been questioned by the grand jury yet?
Uh, this is a compeltely overblown attempt at sensationalism, and its just another embarrassment for Slashdot editors that they bit. Lazarus isn't exposing anything beyond finding someones address in a phone book(or if its unlisted in some other public database), and I image the Wilson's address is widely known at this point. Its not exactly top secret, that once you find someones address, you can get directions or an aerial photo in this day and age. News at 11.....we have this thing called the Internet where you can get maps and photos these days. If you've ever contributed to a political campaign, your name, I think address and how much you gave is online now too.
The only confidential information involved in this whole pitch was that Plame was a CIA agent and THAT was probably not in any public records until Bob Novak published it in a newspaper, probably thanks to Karl Rove or his friends in the White House for leaking that fact to him. Whomever was spreading it around that she was a CIA agent was the only one guilty of anything here, and that was a very low tech ancient offense, leaking and smearing.
The Judith Miller case is potentially interesting though. Maybe she is a crusading journalist fighting for a first ammendment right to protect sources which is the angle most media outlets pitch since she is one of their own. But there are two alternate explanations floating around that are plausible, more interesting, but hard to prove:
A. Judith Miller was a key inciter of the WMD charges against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. She made her career frothing up a panic about the dangers of chemical and biological weapons, and she did half the Bush administrations work for them in trying to build a case that Saddam was an imminent danger to the U.S. because he had them so had to be taken down (at GREAT cost to the U.S. in blood, gold and respect). At this point it appears Miller's multiyear WMD crusade against Saddam was totally wrong. In some circles her career as a journalist is in ruin, because she was both wrong, and looks like a patsy for the Bush administration. Some think she went to jail with glee in an attempt to salvage her reputation by playing the martyr.
B. The second alternate is that Miller is hiding more than just her source. There are indications that her source already released her from any need to maintain confidentiality, so there is a question as to why she still is. One hypothesis is that Miller may have been one of the earlier people who found out Plame was a CIA agent and she may have been calling people, like Karl Rove and saying, "Did you know Joe Wilson's wife is a CIA agent specializing in WMD and sent him on the mission", and people like Rove were repeating something Miller told them, not leaking to Miller. If thats the case, though its a bit of a long shot, then she could be charged for blowing Plame's cover and she might refusing to testify to the grand jury not to protect her source but to protect herself, and in a way that is less obvious than pleading the fifth.
@de_machina
No you again are missing the point about CIA operatives. They don't generally go under cover as completely different people with different names, lives, children. It's not like the movies.
CIA agents generally work in legitimate fields (like owning a business), that gives them access to useful people and information. They can be themselves and learn this information. It just becomes a problem if others learn that they really work for the CIA.
Now please locate Osama for us.
That's a crock. If Rove is protecting the US national security, his job, he responds to questions from reporters asking about a CIA WMD operative with "I don't know", not "she's CIA/WMD". Regardless of his political gain, Rove cannot, as a White House employee, even confirm that someone is CIA, especially during the run up to a war over WMD. That violates national security, that is treason. Rove might have been smart enough not to pick an enemy protected by the laws so far discussed, but he cannot do what he clearly did. And he cannot then lie to the public, claiming "I had nothing to do with it", when he clearly did.
So you go ahead apologizing for Rove's selfserving attack on a CIA agent. You go ahead patronizing a guy attacking our WMD intelligence system as cover for lies about Iraqi uranium purchases that never existed. You go ahead running cover for the people we have protecting us, who instead lie to invade countries they prefer, instead of finishing the legitimate invasions they're piggybacking on. Go ahead, because you're a traitor too.
--
make install -not war
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.
My father is a blogger.
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.
I'm not suprised slashdot got this wrong. The New York Times reported on this issue over a year ago. Plames cover was believed to have been blown when Aldrich Ames sold NOC lists to the Russians in 1994. Three years later, the CIA recalled her. She hasn't been undercover for years.