Do-it-yourself Poindextering -- of ret. Adm. John Poindexter

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Rob Carlson <rob () vees net>
Subject: DIY Information Awareness
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 17:10:41 -0500

This will be old news to some, but amusing for others.  Here is a 
demonstration of do-it-yourself Information Awareness correlation for 
drivers license numbers:

1. Select your political target resident of Florida, Illinois, Maryland, 
Minnesota, New Hampshire, Washington or Wisconsin.  For maximum irony in 
this example, we'll select every privacy advocate's best friend and 
Maryland resident: Vice Admiral John Poindexter.

2. Find a biographical resource for political figures which will have their 
full name and date of birth.  For this exercise, I used Warstories:CC.

  http://www.warstories.cc/

Input their name and retrieve their biographical profile:

  http://www.warstories.cc/person/?personId=3300

3. Take their full name including last name (Maryland MVA always requires 
that the legal name from your birth certificate be used for the initial 
entry in their database) and month and day of birth.  Type them all into 
Alan De Smet's Driver's License Calculator:

  http://www.highprogrammer.com/cgi-bin/uniqueid/dl_md

You should see:

Input
Last Name: Poindexter
First Name: John
Middle Name: Marlan
Date of Birth:
   Month: 8
   Day: 12

Output
Driver's License Number: P532-429-585-630

4. On the assumption that there is no other "John Marlan Poindexter" (or 
similar soundex) born on 8/12 living in the State of Maryland, you now have 
an accurate correlation of the available data which you can save and use to 
verify and challenge a physical ID card.

You can now treat any Admiral Poindexter you meet you presents you a 
different Identification Number with a degree of suspicion prudent in this 
day and age and deliver the alleged impostor immediately to the proper 
authorities.

5. You can now sleep soundly knowing that you have done your patriotic duty.

--
Rob Carlson  rob () vees net  http://vees.net/
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