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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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Nerds playing at being intelligence operatives. Cute.
She probably shouldn't have joined that "CIA Spooks Only" group at Google groups.
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.
their wallet and jewelry box they could look for the "I am a certified spy" card and secret decoder ring.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Did Google present some nice associated ad-links for James Bond cameras, trenchcoats, and Le Carre books while you were doing these searches?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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."
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
Start a happiness pandemic
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.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
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!
the World Wide Web, the Information Super Highway
1990 called, they want their PR bullshit back...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
post David Lazarus address, phone number and google map coords? I'm interested in, uh, how accessible his house is by large van...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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
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
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.
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
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.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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?
Her husband, when pressed (cuz it's kinda dopey to complain about bureaucrats being outed...) admits as much.
No he didn't.
"In stating that "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," Wilson was simply noting that Plame's identity was no longer secret after Novak publicly revealed it."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200507150003
The AP has already run a correction to the story you link to. Nice try though.
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
Also FTA:
"In an interview Friday, Wilson said his comment was meant to reflect that his wife lost her ability to be a covert agent because of the leak, not that she had stopped working for the CIA beforehand."
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Dumbass, If you ever were a clandestine operative your identity must remain secret to protect the CIA front company, other current operatives, and to not tip off all of the people you have been interacting with over the years of your clandestine service.
Your insinuation that if she wasn't out in the field doing a clandestine operation at the time she was outed there was no harm done, is complete nonsense! Her career got F'ed up because of some politician didn't like her husband spilling the truth out to the press. Jail all the bastards involved.
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
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...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.
The second part is the more important one. Finding information is easy, most of the time. Deciding what's relevant is the key issue.
Regardless of the ongoing investigation, his quotes could cut either way
True, which is why he clarified it today.
"In an interview Friday, Wilson said his comment was meant to reflect that his wife lost her ability to be a covert agent because of the leak, not that she had stopped working for the CIA beforehand."
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 down as soon as the convention was over. Guess what? Those cameras are still up, the city said it cost so much to put them in place, they might as well keep them. Chicago followed next, adding 3,000 cameras.
But the internet is worse. Anyone can put any information on the internet, and it is hard to find the source.
I'll give one example from my local newspaper. Someone at the local high school snapped some pictures of a girl he disliked, her naked and I don't know what else, and he put that on the internet. Then he emailed his classmates telling them what website to look at. The girl was humiliated. Could you go back to highschool if everyone saw you naked? How can you concentrate in math class when you feel like everyone is staring right through your clothing. And the jokes, they can be very cruel. Who is going to pay for her counceling, for her pain and suffering?
What is the solution?
We need to remember that privacy is important. Where I live is my buisness, it should not be in a database for anyone to look up.
I will give one example. Say there is Joweski and Co Construction. They build million dollar mansions, and the owner, Mr. Joweski is very rich. Should I be able to google him up, find out all his buisness, where he goes, his home address, and find a way to ambush him, to steal his money, to steal his identity. Or should be be relativly anonymous to 99% of the people. If he steals or srews someone over, the police have the drivers license data, his taxes, they can track him down. But what once was private is now everywhere on the web.
We need a law that says anything which personally identifies a person must be removed from a website unless that person gives continuing concent to keep it up (like agreeing again every 6 months).
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
It's interesting that he was able to dig up the name/maiden name/address of the wife of a former ambassador/editorialist, but he was not able to dig up any connection of hers to the CIA or any other information that would even be *close* to newsworthy. Yet, the article's views-to-news is that he was able to do this in ~30min. But, this is having apriori knowledge that she was working for the CIA.
Had the reporter started from scratch, his methodology would have been:
1. Pick a random friend/enemy.
2. LexisNexis for as much info as possible.
3. Google Map it.
4. Drive up to the home address and ask: "Are you a CIA agent?"
5. Repeat 1-4 until the answer is yes.
6. Profit!
and now back to the fallout shelter...
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
> '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 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.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Nevermind the fact that Patriot isn't even in use here, and has nothing to do with this subject. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your trolls. I am sure some /.er will moderate you up for it.
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.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
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.
You attack his patriotism? I though that kind of mindless heat filled rhetoric was limited to the right. Evidentally not.
Part of the reason this story has legs is that Palme authorized (on her own) her husband to take a all expenses trip to Niger. Her husband lied later and said that Cheney sent him (and later backed up and said Scooter) and then backtracked off of that. At the very least that violates several nepotism clauses.
An all expenses trip to the lovely resort nation of Niger!! Man, that is so great! How can I get that job? I wish I had a wife and the agency that could get me a free trip to "one of the poorest countries in the world, a landlocked Sub-Saharan nation, whose economy centers on subsistence crops, livestock, and some of the world's largest uranium deposits" Almost as nice as free trip to play golf at St Andrews or the beaches of Tahiti.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
He never said Cheney sent him. That's simply a lie. What he said was that the office of the vice president requested the CIA look into this Niger matter. The CIA chose Joe Wilson as he already done this sort of work before (Valerie did not send him to Niger on here own. That's just silly.) He was an ambassador to Niger and Gabon and knew all the players in the area and had completed covert work for the CIA before.
Here's the quote
"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."
Media repeated false GOP talking point on authorization for Wilson trip to Niger
Thalasar
She might, or might not, have suggested her husband, but everyone knew Joe Wilson and knew of his record in Niger. He had a ton of contacts that and had worked there repeatedly.
So they approached him and he offered to make a pro bono eight-day visit to what is, according to the CIA, 'one of the poorest countries in the world with minimal government services', Niger, which he spent visiting contacts and doing his job.
However, don't take my word for it. Demand Joe Wilson pay for his lovely eight-day vaction to Niger. So if the GDP per capita is $900, divide that by 365, we get roughly...three dollars a day manufactured per person.
Let's assume he ate and slept in the best places, costing up to, oh, twenty dollars a day! (The equivalent of 2000 dollars a day here.)
So if eight days costs, oh, about 200 dollars, plus 150 dollars airfair, so 350 dollars for that vacation. Or it would be if anyone ever wanted to go to Niger.
Of course, you'd then have to pay him for his job. How much is eight days of diplomatic research worth?
Jesus. When did Niger become the Switzerland of Africa, with people jaunting off on vacations to it? They barely have paved roads there.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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...
Now please locate Osama for us.
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.