Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Evidence of a Person’s Identity

Published on April 30, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Question #10 is, “What evidence do you have that this is all true?”

Identity documents and what the person in question tells you are not sound evidence of a person’s identity. A person’s identity is  rooted in their life — where they have lived, worked, gone to school, their relatives and friends.

Countries that have a national identity card system run the risk of the identity card becoming  the single point of failure by making the card the only source of identity information. When this happens, the crook can hide behind the card produced by a compromised system.

If you are in a position that requires you to test claims of identity, then you have to dig deeper for supporting documentation and verification.

The best place to start digging is the persons employment. This may be faked by providing fake companies with phone numbers that are answered by confederates. Check for the  existence of the firms before contacting them. A good place to start is to Google the firm’s phone number to see if appears associated with the firm and nothing else.

For current residence ask for utility bills and home insurance policies. A faker may have a utility bill but they rarely pay for a fake home insurance policy.

When checking references, always ask for the names and contact details of the subject’s friends and family. Of course, you rarely get this, but you may get  useful corroborating data, or you may learn that these people don’t really know the subject if they do not know any of his friends or family.

Counter Surveillance Makeup

Published on April 28, 2010 in Surveillance. 0 Comments Tags: .

An NYU graduate student Adam Harvey is working on a very cheap counter surveillance makeup that could render very expensive facial recognition technology utterly useless.

How Tweet It Is!

Published on April 26, 2010 in News and Twitter. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The Library of Congress announced  they acquired the entire archive of public Twitter activity since its inception in March 2006.  Addition of new data to the archive will create a delay of several weeks between its addition and its availability to the public.

Google has also created  way to revisit tweets related to historic events called Google Replay. It lets you relive a real time search from specific moments in time, but Google Replay  only goes back a few months now, but it will eventually reach back to the very first Tweets.

The New Weapon of Mass Disruption

Published on April 23, 2010 in Security, Survival and Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I guess we all now need to build a Faraday Room instead of a Safe Room or  Bomb Shelter — EMP Attack Would Decimate America and The Great Storm: Solar Tempest of 1859 Revealed. Damn, I thought I was going to get a week-end off this year.

Investigating Public Officials

Published on April 21, 2010 in Private Investigator. 1 Comment Tags: .

This looks like a good example of poor operational security on the part of the drug company.

Drug firm investigated FDA officials

…private investigators working for a drug company gathered information on a high-ranking official at the Food and Drug Administration…
…Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who said it was “an outrage” and has demanded that Kroll tell him how often private detectives target public officials. He also had harsh words for Amphastar…

It shouldn’t surprise anybody that government officials are demanding that they be considered above suspicion and scrutiny when their decisions may cost one company billions of dollars and put billions into the pocket of another.

The Passport

Published on April 19, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Questions #8 and #9 are, “What is your passport number?” and “Where was it issued?”

Most people regard a passport as the most reliable and secure identity document. However, this is far from the truth of the matter. For example, Citizenship and  Immigration Canada does not accept certain travel documents because they are easily forged or obtained through fraud.

On March 11, 2010, CIC amended the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations to clarify the factors used to determine which travel documents can be used to apply for a visa, and to travel to or enter Canada.

Under the new Regulations, the following travel documents are considered unreliable and are not acceptable for entry into Canada:

  • any passport claiming to have been issued by Somalia,
  • non-machine readable passports issued by the Czech Republic,
  • temporary passports issued by the Republic of South Africa, and
  • provisional passports issued by Venezuela.

We have not found any way to link a passport number to the issuing country and the person named in it. Nor, have we found a reliable source of information about how to recognise a forged passport. This makes relying on such a document without expert knowledge and the resources of a government department unwise.

If the current passport was issued through an embassy outside the country of residence, then you may have reason to investigate further. Also, remember, it is easier to make yourself look like the person pictured in the passport than it is to forge the passport. If you have any doubt that the person in the passport is the person before you, then action must be taken.

Surveillance in a Wireless World

Published on April 16, 2010 in Privacy, Private Investigator, Security and Surveillance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

When a Windows PC, in its default configuration, is unable to find any wi-fi access point,  it actively seeks one out. In doing this it broadcasts signals trying to connect with any network to which it has previously connected. It will cycle through all of the network identities (names) it has previously used. All of this is sent in the clear and can be captured by anyone with a simple wireless tool running in “sniffing mode” nearby.  All of the network names it  connected with are disclosed over a few minutes. Coupled with an online resource such as WiGLE, this information can be used to establish a profile of the PC owner – where he lives, works, eats, drinks coffee, his gym, his favorite no-tell motel, and more. Any network that PC has connected to using wi-fi is an open book.

Information Overload

Published on April 14, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Vannevar Bush said in 1945, “The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.”

Phone Numbers and Identity

Published on April 12, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Question #7 is, “What are your phone numbers?”

I always ask for home, work, fax, and mobile numbers.  I always Google these numbers and search them in D&B and other databases with a telephone number field. It is amazing what turns-up when you do this. For example, dozens of businesses using the same fax number, or prostitution ads using the same number. Things like this have to be investigated.

I recently found a subject’s mobile phone number on eBay where he was selling goods from his former employer who found this very odd, but the police didn’t — they charged him with a series of thefts.

Email addresses should be treated in the same manner but also search for usernames and social sites associated with the subject.

Guide to Names and Naming Practices

Published on April 9, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , .

 Question #1 is, What is your name?

This isn’t a simple question. For example, Russian surnames have masculine and feminine versions. The UK government provides A Guide to Names and Naming Practices to help guide its personnel through the process of understanding names from other cultures. This guide is the best of its kind that I have seen.

Engineers and Terrorism

Published on April 7, 2010 in Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: .

Eight of the twenty-five hijackers from 9/11 were engineers, and the guy that attempted to blow up the airliner this Christmas (AKA Underpants Bomber) was also an engineer. For a good read on why so many engineers want to blow themselves up, go to the Slate Magazine article by Benjamin Popper.

What’s Your Address?

Published on April 5, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Question #6 is, Where do you live?

This isn’t as straightforward as it seems. People often have mailing addresses, contact addresses for service of process, employment addresses, and an address for government contact. You have to sort through all this and determine what each address is used for and then determine where the person actually resides. As a matter of course, you verify that the provided address is a residential address and that he or she does in fact live there. (The best verification is that you find him at home in the evening in the middle of the week.)

Man Trap

Published on April 2, 2010 in Private Investigator. 0 Comments Tags: .

The prevalence of grow-ops in many neighbourhoods brings with it many problems. An acquaintance of mine discovered one of the worst problems first-hand.

While doing neighbourhood inquires, he didn’t get an answer at  the front door but heard something around the side of the house. He walked along the side of the house expecting to meet the homeowner there or in the backyard. As he stepped into the backyard his leg was pierced by a mantrap and a shotgun blast very nearly struck him. He managed to extricate himself from the spikes that had pierced his calf and flee before the aroused occupants finished him off.