Privacy is easy to breach
"The fracas over whether Karl Rove, one of
President Bush's most trusted advisers, publicly
outed an undercover CIA operative highlights the
ease with which personal information on virtually
anyone can be obtained.

It also points to the need for privacy laws --
and, in this case, national-security laws --
recognizing the harm that can be done with only a
few computer keystrokes.

That harm, as a slew of recent security breaches
makes clear, can include identity theft, credit
card fraud and other invasions of one's
personal-data space.

It can also represent a graver danger if the work
you do is of interest to terrorists and other
enemies of this country.

I found out how significant this threat can be
when I attempted to identify the CIA agent in
question for myself, based solely on what Rove is
known to have told a journalist.

The results were troubling, to say the least.

First, a little background:

The key issue this week has been whether Rove
broke the law when he reportedly told a
journalist, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, that
the wife of a prominent administration critic
works for the CIA in the sensitive field of
weapons of mass destruction.

Rove's role was confirmed by an e-mail sent by
Cooper to his bureau chief. The e-mail, obtained
by Newsweek, concerned former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson, who had written a 2003 opinion piece
challenging one of the White House's main
justifications for an invasion of Iraq.

Wilson had been dispatched to Africa by the CIA
in late 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had
tried to buy uranium from Niger. He found no
evidence to support this allegation.
Nevertheless, the claim was included in Bush's
2003 State of the Union speech.

Cooper wrote in his e-mail that he'd been told by
Rove that Wilson wasn't sent on the trip by
either the CIA director or by Vice President Dick
Cheney.

Cooper wrote: "It was, KR said, Wilson's wife,
who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues
who authorized the trip."

Novak jumps in

Cooper didn't write a story about this right
away. But shortly after Cooper's exchange with
Rove took place, syndicated columnist Robert
Novak did publish a piece about Wilson.

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife,
Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons
of mass destruction," Novak wrote. He cited two
"senior administration officials" as saying that
Plame was responsible for sending her husband to
Niger.

According to the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act of 1982, it's a federal crime if
anyone "as a result of having authorized access
to classified information, learns the identity of
a covert agent and intentionally discloses any
information identifying such covert agent to any
individual not authorized to receive classified
information."

It's not my place to say whether Rove crossed
that line in his discussion with Cooper. But I
can say what I was able to do with the
information Rove reportedly supplied.

First of all, I knew from published reports that
the full name of the author of the critical op-ed
piece was Joseph C. Wilson IV. A Google search
quickly told me that he was born in 1949.

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.

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.

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."

Little effort required

Rove's questionable judgment aside, this episode
underlines how little effort is required in this
info-rich age to identify and locate virtually
anyone. You don't even need that person's name.

This should alarm anyone who relies on a measure
of secrecy for his or her well being, as well as
all others who value their privacy.

It also should serve as a wake-up call for
legislators that existing privacy and
national-security laws haven't kept pace with
dazzling improvements in information technology.

The intent of current laws might be to keep
certain info under wraps. The reality is that
nearly all data are exposed and accessible, there
for the taking by anyone with a computer and a
small measure of resourcefulness.

With little effort, I pinpointed a working CIA
agent. I did so only to make a point.

Can we be sure that the intentions of the next
person to commence such a search will be as
benign?

David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays
and Sundays. He also can be seen regularly on
KTVU's "Mornings on 2." Send tips or feedback to
dlazarus@...."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/15/BUG0UDO7R31.DTL&hw=P\
rivacy&sn=001&sc=1000

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