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."

Comments

It's worse than that...

[gbulmash]

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

easy to blow the entire CIA front firm too

[theodicey]

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. You can see them at Open Secrets

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.

Google Me This, Batman

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Better example: The sad story of David Kelly

[Florian Weimer]

According to this story from The Guardian, 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.

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

[mkro]

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. 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.