[privacy] FW: Data mining methods revealed

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/06/22/data_mining_me
thods_revealed?mode=PF
 
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 <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/> The Boston Globe 

Data mining methods revealed


Ex-broker bares trade to Congress


By Associated Press  |  June 22, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Even as others cited the Fifth Amendment, a former data broker
enthralled Congress yesterday with a behind-the-scenes lesson on how this
shadowy industry covertly gathers Americans' telephone records without
subpoenas or warrants.

Some lawmakers gasped and others shook their heads in amazement during
testimony from James Rapp, a former data broker run out of the business
years ago by Colorado police.

Others identified as active data brokers refused to answer questions about
how they conduct business, invoking their constitutional rights against
saying anything under oath that might be used by prosecutors.

Rapp described what steps he would use, for example, to locate and steal the
credit-card records of Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois,
saying he would first trick a utility operator to reveal her home address.
He also boasted that he could uncover the bank password of Representative
Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, in one hour.

``It's just playing the game," said Rapp, who told lawmakers he now cares
full time for his elderly mother in Colorado and lives off his family's
savings.

Lawmakers were impressed -- and troubled -- as Rapp explained how easily
customer service representatives at America's leading telephone and credit
companies can be duped into revealing private account information.

``I don't think we have any privacy at all," said Representative Cliff
Stearns, Republican of Florida.

Brokers have tricked telephone carriers into disclosing private customer
information and broken into online accounts, in some cases guessing
passwords that were the names of pets.

``She has two pets, one named Rainbow and the other is Max," wrote Donnie
Tidmore of Waco, Texas, in September in an e-mail to one such data broker,
PDJ Investigations of Granbury, Texas.

Tidmore, a private detective, also works as police chief in nearby Crawford,
Texas, where President Bush owns his ranch. Tidmore wanted lists of cellular
calls and the Social Security number of a Virgin Mobile USA subscriber .

Tidmore told the AP yesterday the brokers he used obtained data legally ,
but he acknowledged he has no idea how PDJ could obtain phone records
lawfully without a subpoena or warrant.

PDJ's owner, Patrick Baird, was among 11 people identified as data brokers
who invoked their Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate themselves. They
included Jim Welker, a Colorado lawmaker who operated Universal
Communications Co., which advertised it could obtain lists of anyone's
telephone calls for $50.

Another data broker, Michele Yontef, smiled slightly when Representative Ed
Whitfield, Republican of Kentucky, read excerpts from an e-mail she sent to
a colleague in July in which she complained: ``I was shot down four times. .
. . I keep getting northwestern call center and they just must have had an
operator meeting about pretext as every operator is cued in." Yontef was
described as legendary among data brokers, so skillful in obtaining private
phone records that she was known as ``Ma Bell."
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